


The Fault is Not in Our Stars

by orphan_account



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: M/M, Violence, a pissy loki, as loki usually is, but still a fair warning, odin and frigga are trolls, sexual content in later chapters, unnecessary family fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-07-18
Updated: 2013-12-13
Packaged: 2017-11-10 05:18:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,724
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a long and wretched campaign, Asgard has conquered Jotunheim. To ensure King Laufey's cooperation and later friendship between the kingdoms, Asgard takes home the apparent heir to the throne, Loki Laufeyson. Loki is, unfortunately, anything but complacent. </p>
<p>Based on the art by stunningly talented Wantstobelieve: http://wantstobelieve.tumblr.com/post/18102496999/guess-who-just-watched-troy-again-yup-that</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Temple in the Mountain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Elsian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsian/gifts).



> "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings." Julius Caesar, by Shakespeare.

It continued to surprise Thor how the biggest cities, the one boasting most splendor, were nearly always the easiest to overtake. 

He could have credited their dominance to the _berserk_ , the most glorious state of a warrior, fueled by wrath and love and anger and bloodlust and, obviously, a lot of alcohol. But here, in this desolate waste of ice and rock, none of his soldiers had indulged, too fearful by half of the imposing silence of the frozen ocean below the plain in which they had made camp. 

Thor did not trust himself in berserk state, and only very rarely drank at all in the eve of battle. Great amounts of alcohol had two different outcomes in Thor Odinsson; either he was a very happy silly man, or an infuriated stupid animal. He preferred his mind clear and sharp. 

For whatever reason, no matter what secrets lurked behind their prowess in war, Asgard was nearly unstoppable in battle. There was a strategy to their combat, of course; a certain strategic thought, most often devised by Odin himself, and nearly always consisting of a slow beginning followed by a savage battle. 

It was not only the strategy that won them their wars, though. Once the strategy had played out and the armies had collided like waves crashing against rocks, discipline dissolved, and the game was up. All that remained was how strong his arm was, and how willing he was to live through everyone else’s deaths. 

And no one was more willing to live than the Aesir. 

Thor had always loved the winter; he loved the clean cold scent of snow, the delicate sound of it crushing beneath the soles of his leather boots. It made laughter bubble in his belly, raw and wild and animalistic in the face of his bloodied enemies. 

He stopped for a moment, to wipe a spray of blood from his face and to look on to the unfolding of the battle. This was not war; or it was, only on a very small scale. Jotunheim was little enough it could only with fondness be called a _kingdom_. But a kingdom it was, and like any other it came with a king and his son, and if the army was to be brought down, then that king and that son needed to be taken into custody. 

The main body of the Aesir invading forces was engaged in front of the city walls. Thor could appreciate the contrast between his own men, clad in leather and furs and wool, and the Jotunheim soldiers, dressed in fine linens and light metal armor. Jotunheim was a cold, barren place, but its people were used to the eternal winter and suffered it little. Asgard was nothing like it; the winter was snowy and cold, but not harsh and biting like the wind leeching away Thor’s heat. 

Asgard did not boast cities as grand as this one, but was a country rather of smaller, warmer villages; a temperate and close place, in any case: the streets wide but the buildings warm. For all its vastness it was compact, designed to keep people in, happy in community. 

Jotunheim was nothing like Asgard. The capitol city entire was built creeping up the face of a cliff, as if hanging on by its fingernails, seeking perhaps to escape the ever-changing flow of the ice plates in the valley below. Legend said it had once been an ocean, rippling and alive and turquoise-colored. But that had been many thousands of years ago, before Asgard had been born. 

Thor did not know how humans could sustain themselves in such a wretched place.

“The city will be taken soon enough,” Lady Sif said, appearing at his shoulder. She whipped her long silken braid over her shoulder and wiped blood carelessly from her smooth cheek. A splendid beauty, a herald of swift death. 

Thor nodded absently, eyes roaming, studying. His father Odin had taken on the right side of the army, the most powerful flank getting the most savage of the action, for it had led the assault against the walls and gates. Thor was leading a smaller host himself, picking at the stragglers and capturing the fleeing. Even here the battle was formidable; the Jotun were no gentle kittens. 

“The soldiers are gathering by the temple, there,” he said, gesturing with Mjolnir briefly. “I wonder what they think they protect; it is not as though I care for their gods.” 

“It is said that there are many riches in the temples,” Sif offered, shrugging. 

“No,” Thor said pensively, adjusting the leather strap of Mjolnir’s shaft around his wrist. “It must be something else. If we win, surely their riches will be ours all the same; fighting to protect them now is pointless.” 

They looked on for a moment, contemplating. 

“Unless of course riches of other natures are kept there,” Sif said carefully. Volstagg came towards them, wiping the wicked curve of his battle axe on his long cape. 

“Well, the crown prince was downed this morning,” Thor narrowed his eyes. “And Laufey himself is battling the Allfather at the walls. So who, exactly, is ordering the rest of the army, and piecing together strategies? I see a lot of runners coming and going from that temple.”

Volstagg stared at the temple for a moment. “Not out for a stroll, I suppose.”

“In the dead of winter,” Thor eyed him critically. “In the middle of a bloody battle. Yes, I see how that is likely.” 

Volstagg widened his eyes at him in comical bewilderment. “This people are insane, Thor. Insane I tell you. They have taken complete leave of their senses. I tell them to surrender and they rush me!”

“Maybe they feel the need to smash in your hideous face,” Fandral said cheerfully, joining them. 

“As opposed to you, who they are eager to rape,” Volstagg replied, grinning. 

“But you needn’t worry, Fandral, I shall protect your honor,” Sif bowed gallantly. 

“And I your bottom,” Volstagg offered. 

“And when you are done with that,” Thor rolled his eyes, catching Fandral by the back of the neck and pushing him forward. “Perhaps one of you can spare time to help me end this war already, hm? To the temple. Let us go hunting.” 

Thor hefted Mjolnir in the air and raised his voice to thunder, calling the soldiers to him. Once he had the force he deemed necessary, he threw them in one great swelling wave towards the temple, seeking to storm it as quickly as possible. 

It seemed strange to Thor how dispersed the city was, and how little warmth it invited, when in this climate it seemed to him one would want to huddle closer to those one loved, instead of being so very far apart and alone. But then the ways of Jotunheim were different and foreign, and very old besides. 

The temple was cut out of the face of the mountain, rock made alive with carvings of figures, with silhouettes of strange and unknown gods, scrollworks of languages Thor did not understand and could not read, or find any meaning in. The main door itself was firmly closed and likely barred from the inside, and would most likely be impossible to impregnate. For all it was a religious place, it had a definitive strategic advantage; the general therein sheltered had chosen his haven well. 

But the servant’s door at the side, small and unadorned, looked as frail as any other. Thor made his orders curt and to the point; break through the lines and smash open the door. He led the assault, flanked at either side by Sif, Volstagg and Fandral, and was quickly joined by Hogun, streaked in blood and unsmiling. 

“You have no enjoyment in life, Hogun,” Volstagg scolded him, pausing to regain some breath and extricate his blade form a corpse. “I feel very sad for you.” 

“Not all of us can be licentious drunkards, Volstagg,” Thor replied, kicking at a defender and smashing in his ribs. He winced. Their metal-plated armor was rather delicate. 

“If we all were, the world would be a much happier place.” 

“I shall take your theory up to my father, and see that he understand the wisdom of it.” 

“I can just imagine King Odin’s face at that,” Fandral laughed. 

Thor shoved a soldier out of his way and found himself right in front of the door. With one critical and brief look, he hefted his hammer and smashed it against the lock at the side of the door. Door and lock exploded in splinters and shards of cold-weakened iron. Volstagg delivered a vicious kick, shoving away the remains, and preceded Thor into the dark precinct beyond. 

Thor and Sif paused by the door, squinting into the darkness, as the Aesir soldiers poured like water around them. 

“For lowly soldiers and priests, they fight with bravery,” Fandral said quietly. 

“To die on their feet,” Thor nodded, and advancing deeper into the temple turned down a side door. They were in a long, twisting corridor, dark and damp. The thick stone walls allowed for little sound to pass, but he could hear the noises of skirmish within the temple walls, and the corridor itself was littered with the bodies of priests, a pitiful carnage. Aesir soldiers moved quickly. 

“This is mad,” Thor sighed. “We are killing harmless priests like dogs. We must stop them, immediately. Fandral, let the warriors know I want them captured, _captured_ , not murdered. Unharmed it at all possible.” 

Fandral nodded and turning around went in search of the higher ranking soldiers, delivering the orders at a shout. 

A shriek of pain jolted them, and then came to an abrupt end. He gritted his teeth, and kept walking. He picked up a torch from one of the wall-rings and blindly began to walk deeper into the temple, searching out the battles to swiftly order them stopped. Odin had told him that the most dangerous opponent in war is a shrewd and clever strategist; if he could find and capture the general, and cut off the head of the serpent, Jotunheim would fall. 

He repeated his order over and over and over for what felt like hours, wondering around the labyrinthine temple without any real destination, for he had no notion of how it was laid-out, occasionally stepping into long unfinished corridors that died in walls of solid rock, sometimes stepping into huge cavernous halls. 

“This temple is still under construction,” Sif said, in wonder. “Already it is vast; how deep into the solid rock did they hope to go, do you think?”

Thor shook his head wordlessly. He didn’t know. 

This temple was nothing like the ones they had in Asgard, with their wooden walls lined of tall windows to let the sunlight stream in over the polished stones of the floors. It made Thor feel claustrophobic and little, dark and insignificant like a roach. 

“A sad place for apprentice children,” Sif said at length, hushed and subdued by the imposing, cold walls. 

“A sad place for any one,” Thor murmured back, and staggered slightly when they emerged, abruptly, into a sunlit courtyard. He looked up, bewildered, to see that a great circular window had been cut into the face of the mountain, opening the ceiling up to the sky. A thick blanket of white snow had covered the stone of the floor, and adorned the shoulders and crown of the statue in the center. It lay undisturbed, as if no one had stepped upon it in ages.

There was not a single sound, here in this deep place, and Thor realized they had stepped into the bowels of the temple, to the forbidden chambers of the higher priests. 

Fandral caught up with them then, wiping sweat from his brow. “Well, fair news. We manage some answers from a soldier; it seems like the second prince is hiding here as well, Laufey’s second eldest.”

Thor almost grinned. “If we can capture the boy, Laufey will have to negotiate a ceasefire for him. The crown heir has died; the second must be next in line of succession.”

“He has two other sons,” Sif reminded him. 

“Aye, but both children, and Laufey is an old man. He needs an able-bodied man to take his place. He will want his secondborn returned, surely.” 

He stopped and turned around, surveying the quiet courtyard, a landscape of grey and blue stones muted in the iridescent white of newly fallen snow. 

“He is hidden here, I know he is,” he said quietly, stepping into the snow. “This must be the heart of the temple.”

“Thor,” Sif whispered, uneasy. “This place makes my skin crawl. The gods do not want us here.” 

“I am Thor Odinsson, blood of the Gods themselves; I do not fear their wrath.” Thor said firmly. 

He inclined his head slightly, listening. 

_There_. A slight, muffled sob, and a scrape of leather on stone. A hushed word. 

Thor made a gesture with his hand, and Sif and Fandral moved silently to the other side of the courtyard; they moved together towards an open doorway, closing in from opposite directions so no one could escape them. Thor shifted his grip on the leather-wound shaft of Mjolnir, breathing calmly through his nose, great clouds of vapor in the biting cold. 

Something crashed in a room across the courtyard. Fandral whirled around, swiftly altering his course in that direction. Sif glanced at him, and then at Thor; he nodded and gestured for her to follow him. Thor could handle himself; Fandral, however, had a bleeding wound in the right thigh, and seemed winded and fatigued. Sif gathered her cape around her left arm and followed the Dashing through the open doorway. 

Thor waited a moment to see if they fared well, and was startled to hear the sound of stone on stone, as if a wall—as if a wall were _moving_.

Growling low, he rushed the doorway, but too late, _too late_. The stone wall had closed and all that remained behind was a boy, a lowly priest clad in the green robes of the apprentices. He could hardly be anywhere near twenty winters, slender and delicate-looking, pale of skin and dark of hair. He looked frightened as he stood quickly from where he’d been kneeling by the wall. 

Thor stalked forward with a sound of frustration. He gripped the boy the arm and threw him away against a statue, just to get him out of the way as he inspected the wall. 

“Where is the trick, priest?” he hissed, eyes glinting. “How do I open the wall?”

The priest-to-be crouched down, back against the statue, and picked up from the floor a short bronze sword, elegant of design but too heavy for him. He nevertheless wielded it with bravery, threatening Thor. 

His eyes were the most alluring green, Thor observed with detachment. 

“You better put that down,” he said mildly. “Before you hurt yourself.” 

“They were of no importance,” the boy said quietly, voice soft. “Only priests and maidens and attending girls. They were very afraid. You have no business with them.”

“Was the prince with them?” Thor demanded. 

He saw the boy’s eyes flick to the door and then back to him, where they fixed. He was intelligent, this little priest; He knew he could not take Thor in battle, and his only chance was to escape. But he was unsure as to whether he was quick enough to dodge Thor’s grip and make it out to the yard—and surely had had heard them speak, which meant he didn’t know if someone would be waiting for him outside. 

He was frightened, and weak-looking; he’d fall to Thor in moments. Even Fandral and Sif would take him down as easily as they breathed. So he knew escape was unlikely; he was, Thor realized, simply stalling. 

But for all the fear in his clear green eyes, there was cleverness there; he would not be intimidated into confessing. He would give no indication as to where the trigger for the hidden door was located; they were wasting valuable time, and all the while the prince and the general were more than likely escaping through the walls and into safety. 

A different strategy, then. 

“Will you not tell me your name?” Thor asked, not unkindly, staring at the boy. He truly was quite lovely, fine-featured and elegantly built, Thor could tell even from the way he was crouching. 

“Dead men have no names,” the boy said bitterly. 

Thor arched his brows, “I do not mean to kill you. I mean you no harm at all, indeed.”

“I suppose next you will suggest I put down my sword, and let you come near enough to prove it.” 

“You may keep your sword,” Thor replied, smiling slightly. “For as long as you can hold it up.”

The boy’s arm was shaking. The sword really was too heavy for him, and most likely he was untrained in warfare as well. It would be the work of a moment to disarm and subdue him. Thor did not move from his spot by the wall. 

“And after that?” the priest-boy challenged. 

Oh, Thor liked him. 

“You know what happens after that.” 

The priest stared at him, inscrutable. There was something odd about him, Thor realized, without being able to pinpoint precisely what it was. He was too calm by half, of course, and too intelligent for a priest; there was a shrewd, cold edge to his startling forest-green eyes. 

“We will not hurt the prince,” He insisted, earnest. “We mean only to hold him, to stop this senseless killing, to put an end to this war. I give you my word, I will keep him safe from any pain. I cannot give my word on that for the strategist, but he’ll be given a swift and painless death, on my honor.”

Ink-black eyebrows twitched slightly closer in confusion. Thor stilled. Something here was amiss.

“The strategist,” he said slowly, but the boy’s face was once again a calm, expressionless mask. Thor saw him shift his weight slightly, leaning forward into his right leg; he meant to make a dash for the doorway, and tempt his luck. 

With two strides, Thor blocked the door. The priest’s jaw worked, as he gritted his teeth. There was defiance in his eyes, but the rest of his face didn’t seem to agree, and had settled for fear. 

“Priest, tell me your name.”

“So that you may inscribe it on my tombstone?” the boy tightened his grip on the sword. 

Thor was going to reply that, again, he would not hurt him. In all honesty, he was beginning to feel the temptation to keep him as a servant; the little priest had a temper to him, and he was undoubtedly very beautiful. Thor was not in the habit of forcing himself unto people, but he did value wit and courage, and certainly he appreciated beauty. The boy would make for pleasant company. 

“Well, and what have we here?” Fandral asked, from behind Thor. Slowly, cautiously, he moved into the room. He was not limping, but just barely. Sif stayed behind at the doorway, silent.

A sudden crash from the room to their right made them twitch in that direction. The door flung open, and a soldier stormed in, sword bloodied and at the ready. 

“My liege, we must leave at once—“

He stopped, noticing Thor and Fandral. His clear hazel eyes shot immediately to the priest, horrified. Thor’s eyes also slid away from him and to the boy, whose own green eyes had widened, though to say his fear was evident was an overstatement. He had an admirable control over himself. 

Quite becoming of a _royal prince_. 

“You fool,” Laufeysson breathed. “Run. Go— _now!_ ”

The soldier hesitated, young enough to be swayed by fear and authority but old enough to be held by duty. He did not dare abandon his prince, alone in the presence of a warrior of the invading force. Yet it was obvious he was no match for Thor or Fandral, and in an engagement would promptly be defeated. 

“Maybe drop to your knees,” Fandral suggested. “It seems the best option.” 

“Turn around and leave immediately,” Laufeysson ordered harshly, sword-arm dropping a few inches; he grew tired. “Odinsson, you have no right to his life. Let him leave with it.” 

“Go on, then,” Thor said, eyes fixed on the prince. “Leave.” 

But at the end the man could not, and threw himself with more enthusiasm than sense in Fandral’s direction, likely thinking him the least skilled, and possibly knowing that cutting through him was the fastest way to his prince’s side. 

“No!” Laufeysson fell from his crouch to a knee, ready to jump to his feet, but Fandral had only to lift his sword-arm to kill the man in one single thrust. He’d nearly impaled _himself_. Blood splattered the stone floor. Thor watched the man fall to his knees, list to the side and crumple to the floor. Fandral the Dashing stepped away from the growing pool of blood, sighing in sad distaste. 

“What a waste; he needn’t have died at all.”

Thor turned back to the prince. His green eyes swung back to him, alight with anger. He wasn’t lovely; he was _superb_. 

“So you knew who I was all along,” he said calmly. 

“Your reputation precedes you,” Laufeysson said. “I knew you were a tall, big man of blond hair and blue eyes. And I knew of the scar over your eye.” 

“I must look a sight,” Thor commented, glancing briefly at himself. He had some cuts and scrapes, inevitable mementos of a war, and knew he was splattered in blood and grime, streaked in rivulets of molten snow and running sweat. His hair was in disarray, though he’d tried to comb it back with his fingers. And he’d been told his blue eyes glowed eerily in the darkness. 

“May I have your given name, Laufeysson?” he asked politely. 

“Loki,” the prince replied, but he shifted back and once again lifted his sword. “But if you believe that I will meekly let you kill me, you are very wrong.”

“I do not want to kill you at all,” Thor said reasonably, holding Loki’s eyes as Fandral inched inconspicuously closer. “You must know that is not the way of Asgard. If you will lower your sword and come with us, we may discuss this calmly.”

“I am calm now; we may discuss it as we are.”

“If you come with us in peace, and give an oath not to attempt to hurt us, we can stop this war now, Loki,” Thor’s tone was calm, quiet. Loki’s eyes were like chips of emerald. “No one else needs get hurt of die.”

“And you expect me to _trust_ you. After you killed my brother.”

Thor hesitated. “Your brother died in battle and in honor. We could have taken him, and then we would not have hurt him.”

“But he would be a _prisoner_ ,” Loki said bitterly, spitting the word with obvious distaste. “And you would take him to Asgard, and there he would be your _servant_. A royal prince of Jotunheim, the Blood of Ice, pouring your wine.” 

This was a sour truth that could not be denied, and Thor did not try. Being a servant in Asgard was no disgrace, as they were treated very kindly and justly, but he did not think Loki would warm to the idea through that argument. Fandral was two feet away now, and Loki’s arm was trembling visibly anyway; it would be over soon, one way or another. 

“He would have been my personal aide, as a firstborn of royal blood—“

“Toruk was to be a king,” Loki snapped. “Not your manservant. And anyway he was not the firstborn; _I_ am the firstborn son of Laufey.” 

From her place in the doorway, Sif huffed. “Loki Laufeysson, do insult him by lying. If you had been the crown prince, you would have been at the vanguard.”

“Indeed,” Loki ground out, eyes cold as ice. “The crown prince in the high general of the Jotun armies. Yet is the firstborn son proves to be—unworthy—then the second son would be entitled to the throne. Toruk was heir by choice of my father, and not by right of birth.” 

It began to make sense. Of course, Loki was too old to be an apprentice; clearly he had been given to the temple late in age. That also explained his decidedly not meek and mild attitude, the most common trait amongst the men of religious devotion. And perhaps—perhaps he _had_ been trained in weaponry, then. The sword was heavy, but his grip on it was comfortable enough, familiar. 

“Why are you not worthy, Loki?” Thir asked softly. 

Loki did not appreciate the gentleness in his tone, and his eyes were very nearly glowing with rage. 

“That is no business of yours,” he snapped. 

Fandral lashed forward like a viper. He caught his wrist, knocking his knuckles against the hard stone of the statue. Loki gasped; the sword clattered to the ground. Fandral yanked on his arm, throwing the balance of his crouch so he fell forward on his knees and had to brace himself on his free arm. In one swift motion he twisted his arm behind his back, and forced his chest to the floor. 

Loki grunted in pain, then immediately stifled the sound, too proud by half. Fandral held him easily down, settling his knee heavily on the curve of his back. Thor snapped his eyes back to Loki’s enraged gaze. 

“You are defeated. Will you come in peace?” Fandral asked. 

“Burn in Hel,” Loki replied, quite calmly. 

Fandral sighed. “Sif, give me some leather; I’ll tie him up.” 

Sif strolled forward, unwinding a long strip of leather from her braid. She handed it to Fandral, and watched critically as the Dashing wordlessly gripped the prince’s other wrist and bound them together, tightly but not enough to cut circulation. He wanted Loki secured and subdued, not hurt. He was, after all, little more than a boy, and fragile-looking. 

Thor crouched down and sought out Loki’s gaze, infuriated and bitter. 

“I will not hurt you, Loki,” he said earnestly. 

“Spare me your promises,” the prince spat. “Your word is worthless to me.” 

Thor squeezed the boy’s shoulder, smiling slightly at Sif.

“He is going to be a handful,” Sif warned. “Wipe that smile off your face, because _I_ am certainly not taking care of him. Your prisoner, _your_ responsibility.” 

Fandral got off Loki’s back and, gripping his arm firmly, dragged him to his feet. Thor took a long look at him. Reaching forward, he fingered the cloth of the boy’s robes; he found it was fine and thin, offering no shelter at all from the cold. Clearly indoors clothes. Loki had not meant to run at all; he had just been helping the others in the temple escape, likely those most vulnerable, the small girls and younger priests not yet over the age of thirteen, who customarily would be taken as charges of Asgard to be raised in the light of Asgardian gods.

Thor tugged at his fur wrap to free it from its clasp at his shoulder. He made to wrap it around Loki’s shoulders, but the prince recoiled, glaring. 

“I do not need your _pity_.” 

“Not pity, Loki Laufeysson,” Thor replied evenly, wrapping the fur around him even though Loki flinched under his fingers. It was tempting to grab hold of the boy and steady him; he seemed strangely frail, so pale and thin; a vessel too delicate to contain the fire within. “A kindness; a show of friendship.” 

“ _Keep_ your bloody friendship,” Loki hissed. 

Thor sighed, adjusted the wrap and pushed his fingers through his own hair, hissing when he rubbed against the cut at his hairline. He’d forgotten about that; he probably really looked sinister, and no wonder Loki thought him a savage. 

“Let us go end this war,” he told Sif and Fandral. He squeezed Loki’s bony shoulder once, and releasing him turned around to make his way back out of the temple.


	2. Chapter 2

“You are defeated,” Thor said, for the fifth time. He was tired and sleepy and his patience began to grow thin. “You are a prisoner.”

Loki raised his chin. 

“I see no reason why I should docilely _stay_ one,” he said stubbornly, even now twisting his wrists in the leather bounds, as if he could hope to loosen them, which he could not. He was on his knees on the center of Thor’s tent, still in his robes and Thor’s fur wrap, but his right cheek had reddened and would soon bruise. 

The soldier that had caught him in this, the third time he attempted to escape, had struck him across the face when the young prince very eloquently insulted him and, as far as Thor could understand, the vast majority of his family. 

“Very well,” Thor said, setting his jaw. “If you will behave like a stubborn child, I will _treat_ you like one.”

In two strides, he crossed the tent to Loki and, grabbing his wrists, forced him to his feet and pushed him over to one of the poles holding up the leather of the tent. Loki tugged at his wrists one, possibly just to be contrary as he had no chance of escaping Thor’s grip, and Thor yanked him closer to glare at him. 

“You will stay _still_.”

“I owe you no such loyalty,” Loki hissed back, eyes bright with anger. He was a spiteful, proud young man. 

Thor gritted his teeth and crouched down, dragging Loki down to the floor with him until he was kneeling. He gripped his wrists and unknotted the leather. As soon as he felt some give, Loki sought to free himself, but Thor was prepared, and took his right wrist in a punishing grip, watching without satisfaction as the boy winced. 

“That is _enough_ ,” he said low, staring into Loki’s green eyes as he continued to unwind leather. “Do you hear me? _Enough_.” 

Loki looked angry enough to catch fire. His eyes darted away to the entrance of the tent, but the soldier was still standing there, angry and insulted, and very ready to strike him again. He’d not manage to escape, even if he evaded Thor, which was unlikely enough. 

Thor twisted the leather between and around Loki’s wrists, and then very quickly lashed him to the pole and secured him there with a complicated, tight knot. To free him he would have to cut the leather, later, but he wasn’t troubled about it now. He wanted to sleep. 

He moved away and stood, pushing back his hair. He was still dirty and bloodied; the battle had only ended minutes beforehand, with Laufey’s capture, and Thor had been up and fighting since before dawn. 

Loki yanked on the bindings, stunned and offended. 

“I am not an animal!” he snapped, glaring murderously at Thor. 

It spoke volumes of Thor’s frayed state of mind that instead of being irritated and angry, he was only amused. He dismissed the soldier with a nod, and wearily began to unwind the leather straps holding together his gauntlets and armor. The water he’d ordered was still warm, and he sighed when he splashed it over his face and shoulders to wash. It was a welcome reprieve from the wretched cold that had descended over Jotunheim together with the night. 

“We have captured your father,” Thor said, glancing at Loki. “You will be glad to know he is largely unharmed.”

“Largely,” Loki said quietly. “How well you comfort me.” 

“With Toruk dead, you will be next in line for the throne,” Thor continued, unfazed. “You will come with me to Asgard until such a time as your father can be trusted. As crown prince, you will be treated with honor and kindness, Loki. I know it means little to you,” he smiled slightly. “but you have my word on that.” 

Loki frowned slightly, shoulders slumping. He tugged on the leather around his wrists once, restlessly. 

“Laufey has very little love for me,” he said quietly, eyeing Thor. “He will do nothing to ensure my freedom or my safety. As a bargaining chip, I am afraid you have chosen rather poorly.” 

Thor, who had been busy unknotting the leather holding up the armor over his abdomen, glanced up without stopping his work. 

“No father would leave his son to die amongst enemies.” 

“Perhaps such is the case for the Aesir,” Loki said, resting his forehead on the wooden pole he was lashed to. “But we Jotun are different. I was cut off the succession line a while ago, and my father has many sons and daughters besides. Toruk was the crown prince by his choice, but our eldest sister has rights to claim the throne and she is very able; and you will not catch her.”

Frowning, Thor tugged loose the straps of his boots and pulled them off, sitting down on a chair. He pushed his hair off his face and leaned forward on his knees, looking at Loki attentively. He was young, tall and slender, very pale. His dark hair fell straight to the back of his neck, where it began to curl attractively. 

“Why were you removed from the line?” he asked softly. 

Loki frowned and pressed his lips together until they were little more than a thin line. Clearly it was a sore spot, and no wonder; any man robbed of his birth rights would be enraged, and Loki was proud. 

Thor decided to let it be for the time being. 

“So any prince not in the line would become a priest?” he asked instead. 

“No.”

The silence stretched. Loki did not mean to elaborate on the subject, and if his thunderous expression and the way he was pulling on his wrists was any indication, this line of questioning was not appreciated. 

“If you keep doing that, you will hurt yourself,” Thor sighed, standing to pull off his dirty breeches. 

“If you had any care for me at all, you would slit my throat open,” Loki snapped, green eyes boring into Thor, who froze. 

“Stop speaking nonsense,” he ground out. 

“A prince stupid enough to get himself captured is of no use to Jotun,” Loki continued, coldly. “Laufey has wanted me dead for years. Give him any excuse and he will have me executed, and getting captured like a helpless rabbit is more than ample excuse. You might as well decapitate me and be done with it, Odinsson. Or are you so short of servants that you need to dedicate slaves to your service?” 

Thor took in a deep breath and turned to the basin, shaking his head. He dipped a washcloth in the lukewarm water, squeezed it and started washing his neck and chest in long, efficient strokes. He hissed when he rubbed it over a cut or a scrape, but other than that and the sound of the water droplets hitting the hard packed dirt of the ground, there were no sounds in the tent. 

“You might be pleased to know your strategist got away,” Thor said finally, shrugging a light wool robe on. 

Loki’s smile was little more than a bitter twist of pale lips; he made no reply. 

Tired and strained by Loki’s sullen silence, Thor made no other attempts to engage him in conversation, and instead simply went to his bed of furs and stretched out to sleep. 

“So I’m to sleep lashed to the pole, then?” Loki asked, but there was hardly any energy in his tone. He was as tired as Thor. 

“When you start to behave like a proper man of honor, I will release you.” he paused, and with some effort lifted his head to look at the young priest. “Are you warm enough?”

“Just fine,” Loki muttered. 

Thor didn’t have it in himself to argue with him right then and there; Loki knew the temperatures in Jotunheim could plummet at night better than Thor did, so if his pride demanded he froze his fingers off, Thor could do very little to stop him. In any case, it wasn’t his lookout. 

He woke up, impossible to tell how many hours later, in the frigid darkness. The fire had gone out, reduced to red-glowing coals. The cold was absolutely cruel; he gathered a fur cover closer to himself, sitting up with some effort. Sleep had cooled his muscles, strained by the day’s activities, and now he was sore and stiff. He pushed back his hair and strained to see in the darkness, waiting for his eyes to adjust. 

Loki was asleep, lying on his back, the only position that his lashed hands would allow, long legs sprawled out. His breath, coming from slightly parted lips and his nostrils, condensed into long columns of steam that quickly dissolved into the air above him. The fire had been built closer to Thor’s bed; surely the spot Loki was sleeping in must be freezing, but the Jotun showed no signs of discomfort, except those related to his captivity. 

Even in that uncomfortable position he looked elegant. Thor could very easily see him as royal blood now; he was tall and long-limbed, willowy. It was strange, though; Loki looked nothing like Laufey, and even Toruk had had a drastically different body type: tall, yes, as all Jotun, but with muscle running to bulk, and a lot of physical strength. It did not look like Loki could hold his own for long in combat at all. 

A sudden cracking noise startled Thor, and he turned around, thinking it might have come from behind. He tensed, waiting for attack—possibly someone desperate enough to attack him at the heart of the camp in order to free Loki—

Moments passed. Another loud sound exploded through the air. Thor swiftly slipped off the sleeping dais, searching for his hammer in the darkness. 

“The ice,” Loki said suddenly. Thor whirled around. The prince’s eyes were still closed, and he looked perfectly calm. “The ice in the ocean below; in the night it cracks and shifts. That is what startled you awake.” 

“You were awake, yourself.” 

Loki paused. “It is difficult to sleep in an unfamiliar place.” 

Thor understood that, and nodded. He got to his feet and, grabbing two logs of wood, threw them in the fire to revive it. From where he stood he looked down at Loki, on his back on the floor, long legs stretched out. 

“Like what you see?” Loki asked, voice low and cold. “You watch me. Is that why you want to keep me for yourself?”

Thor felt a wave of anger, all the more powerful because Loki’s assumptions were not based completely in empty air. He _did_ watch him; he did _want_ him. But he would not take what was not offered. 

With some effort, however, he controlled himself. He was beginning to understand. Loki was shrewd; if he gave him any edge to hook his fingernails into, the prince would do his best to tear him apart, he could tell. There was some sort of relentless quality to his small cruelties. 

“I have no need to force anyone to my bed,” he said, casually. “Rather I am more surprised it is on _your_ mind, priest.” 

“Priest to be,” Loki sighed, undisturbed. “The oldest apprentice to have ever been given up.”

“Did you like it at all, at least?” Thor asked, sitting down by the fire, closer now to his captive. “It must have been very quiet in that temple.”

“I despised it,” Loki answered flatly, with startling, bare honesty. “I despised everything of that wretched temple.”

“Well,” Thor blinked, at a loss. “I suppose then I have done you a bit of a good turn, have I not?”

“Surely then this debt must mean my lifelong servitude to you,” Loki bit back. 

Thor huffed in irritation. “Will you always be this contrary? Is there no way to appease your anger at all?”

“I have rather a great reserve of it, you understand,” Loki snapped, pulling himself up by his wrists. He moved restlessly for a moment, and finally slumped against the restraints. “May I be untied? I give you my word I will behave, until dawn at least. I grow sore of this position.” 

Thor eyed him suspiciously. “Can I _trust_ your word?”

Loki gave him a jaded, bitter look—his eyes too old for his young face, pain and the sorrow braided into the green. Against all expectations, it seemed like Loki had lead a hard, unforgiving life. 

“You would be a fool to do so.” 

“You sell yourself poorly.”

“I can be little more than what I am, and you little less.” 

“What is that supposed to mean?” Thor asked tiredly, standing up to go to him and untie him. He would remain awake in any case, and could guard him. 

“You should know half the things I say mean nothing unless they mean something you to personally,” Loki shrugged. “I speak without my mind, a great part of the time.” 

“You are a trying person,” Thor sighed, dragging a hand down his face. 

“And you are a fool,” Loki retorted, bringing his knee up sharply, smashing it against Thor’s nose. Thor fell back noiselessly, stunned to such degree he didn’t even manage to react when Loki pushed him off and made to dash for the entrance to the tent. Finally he snapped out of his shock, and with a growl threw himself out and gripped the boy’s ankle. Loki came down hard, grunting. Thor scrambled over and pressed his knee sharply between his shoulder blades, bringing his wrists back to the small of his back, where he tied them securely. 

“May the Gods make you burn in Hel,” Loki spat, twisting like a snake. 

“I don’t need Hel, clearly they hate me enough to burden me with _you_.”

“Then kill me and be done!”

Thor turned him harshly around, gripping his throat. Loki’s eyes widened. There was panic there; for all Loki fought and talked and spat epithets at Thor, he didn’t really wish to die. In truth he was few years above childhood; and if his father truly did loathe him, then no wonder he cared little for his own life. Yet he did care a little. 

“Listen to me very carefully,” he said quietly, face inches from Loki’s. “for I will not repeat myself, and you will find my patience has reached its limit. I will leave Jotunheim with a Jotun prince. It can be you—or it can be one of your little brothers. But believe my words, it will be a Jotun prince.”

He let that sink in. Loki grew very pale, pupils contracting. He swallowed. Yes, just as Thor had thought—Loki cared little for his life, but his little siblings, _those_ he cared for. Thor understood that; back at home in Asgard little Baldr looked to the eastern skies every morning and wished for his father and brother to be returned to him safely. Thor would do anything for Baldr. 

And Loki would do anything for Helbindi and Baleystr. 

“So you can make your choice now,” Thor continued, squeezing Loki’s throat, just short of stopping his breathing. “Live and save your brothers, or die and let me loose on them.”

Loki’s jaw settled, eyes hard like jewels.

“I will be your servant,” he muttered. “Keep away from my brothers, you animal.”

“You behave like an affection-starved dog,” Thor said derisively, standing. “But I’m the animal.”

Loki got on his side and sat up with some effort, wincing at the pull on his shoulders. “Why not, then? If I’m to be your lapdog.”

“Is every word out of your mouth poison?” Thor growled, reaching down to hoist Loki to his feet and force him down on a chair. 

“I give you my word to stay. Not to grovel and be subservient to you.”

Thor ended up binding him back to the pole tent, of course. 

The next morning his father called him to his tent for council. Thor had seen true fear in Loki’s eyes upon the mention of his brothers, but he was not a stupid man; he left a guard at the tent watching over the sullen captive. 

“Well, Laufey has negotiated a ceasefire,” Odin announced. “He knows we have his son. I believe we can end the war this day.”

Thor nodded; Loki had been lying or, quite possibly, underestimated his father’s regard for him. It would take a very cold man indeed to leave his own son to rot in captivity without any sort of attempt to safeguard his life or even attempt to ensure his release. 

“We will meet to negotiate the truce,” Odin continued, laying his knuckles on the surface of the stone war-table and leaning heavily on his arms as he looked down at his maps. Odin looked fatigued, but Thor knew his father had great stores of strength he had not yet used. It had been a long and wretched campaign southward to Jotunheim, and Odin’s many old war scars ached in the cruel cold. 

“Why not the city gates?” Thor suggested, crossing his arms. “We have proved we can assault the city when we so desire. Let them have whatever comfort they find in their shade.”

Odin tilted his head thoughtfully, “In another situation, that would be sound advice, my son. But we have Laufey’s eldest living son now; a show of good will is required.”

Thor arched his brows. “ _Our_ good will?”

“Our good will is the fact we haven’t skinned the boy,” another commander commented.

“We don’t kill helpless children,” Odin arched a brow. 

“He is no child,” Thor replied. “Young man, more like. Stubborn as an old goat, and as cunning as a fox.”

“His father’s son, then,” Odin said, amused. 

Thor made a quick, amused gesture with his lips and eyebrows, a small quirk his mother had passed onto him. Odin laughed. 

“Your new pet giving you trouble, son?”

“You know what they say about keeping ravens,” Thor smiled slightly. “But back to the subject. You want to reassure Laufey that we don’t mean to hurt his son by giving him a chance to negotiate in what he will believe to be higher or, at least, equal ground?”

Odin nodded. 

“Sound diplomatic plan as that appears, I fear a problem might come up; Loki insists he was removed from the line to the throne and that his father will do naught to ensure his life.”

Odin frowned. A commander waved a hand. “But his father has just proved him wrong by asking for a cease-fire.”

“We do not yet know what he wants,” Thor pointed out. “Might be he wants to come to my father and tell him to slit Loki’s throat at once.”

“You believe that is a solid possibility, my prince?”

“No,” Thor replied. “But I would be a fool to discard such a thing out of hand. Loki was sincere enough as he spoke; either he tells it as it is or he is mistaken, but as far as he believes he speaks the truth.” 

Odin straightened. “A complication.”

“If Laufey throws the boy to the wolves, what are we to do?” another commander asked. “We can’t very well kill him. He’s just an innocent priest from what I understand.” 

“I don’t know about innocent, but merely a priest, yes.” 

Odin shook his head pensively. “We shan’t know until we speak to Laufey.”

Thor nodded. In the end, Odin decided to meet Laufey in the battlefield, an equal distance both from the city and the Asgardan camp-of-war. Since Laufey showed up alone, Odin bid Thor stay behind and watch from a distance. The prince gritted his jaw, but he would not argue with his father, so he stayed at the edge of the camp, coiled and restless, pacing, watching like a hawk. The Warriors Three and Lady Sif joined him there. 

“How fares your feral new pet?” Sif asked, handing Thor a long pelt to cover his shoulders with. 

“He put a leash on him, even,” Fandral commented with a wide smile. Thor glanced at him. “I went by your tent first, thinking the council-of-war was done. Little Loki did not look pleased. Or comfortable.” 

“It is like having acquired fire,” Thor scowled. “There is no ordering him around. I might as well dash my head against a rock.”

“Or his,” Volstagg arched his brows. “What are we going to do to him if Laufey tells us to kill him?”

“Not kill him,” Thor said firmly, and batted Fandral’s hands away when the Dashing made to tie the leather cord of the pelt to keep it closed around Thor’s frame. “I am not cold, leave me be.”

“Someone is in a mood,” Fandral smirked, crossing his arms. “Are you annoyed because Odin King would not let you tag along?”

Thor looked over Fandral’s shoulder out into the vast snow and ice field, here his father Odin and the Jotnar King were speaking, seemingly companionably enough, as they walked slowly in parallel to both walls and camp. 

“You think it amusing,” Thor said quietly. “but it is not _your_ father out there alone and exposed, Fandral.”

The Dashing’s smile faded. He looked over his own shoulder to the two pacing Kings, and sighed. 

“Odin King is no fool, and no weakling, my prince.” 

“I am supposed to be his shield,” Thor clenched his fists. 

“Not in a battle of wits, surely,” Volstagg blurted out, eyes wide. Sif laughed out loud, nearly bending over with the strength of her laughter. 

Thor turned around, eyebrows arched, “Are you calling me dim-witted, Volstagg?” he asked, now certainly very amused. “This coming from you? Hogun might as well call _me_ brooding.”

“Well you do have your moments,” Fandral pointed out, shaking a finger in Thor’s face. The prince made a grab for it, but the Dashing moved back immediately, laughing. 

“Come closer, brother,” Thor leered comically. “Let me show you what _I_ do with _my_ fingers.”

Hogun rolled his eyes. 

“Ah!” Volstagg pointed at him, triumphant. “A facial expression! _He lives!_ ”

“Gods be good,” Sif covered her face with her hand. “We are to be ruled by idiots and buffoons.”

“ _I_ am not a buffoon,” Thor told her. “We have Volstagg for that.”

“But you don’t object to the fool part,” Fandral grinned. 

“Every man is a fool, one way or the other,” Thor shrugged. 

“Which is why _I_ ought to rule Asgard,” Sif said, looking at Thor out of the corner of her eye. 

“You can marry Thor and be his puppeteer,” Fandral laughed. “I know a way or two a man can be led around by his—“

“Oh, disgusting,” Sif threw up her hands. 

“Thank you for that,” Thor threw her an amused look. 

“Oh gods,” Volstagg opened his eyes wide. “Can you imagine having a family talk with Heimdall?”

“Gods be good,” Fandral blanched. “It’d never end. He’d start going on about Thor’s duties to his blood, and his wife, and the realm, and his children, and his horse, and his stones, and the stars and the rainbows and raindrops—“

“I already have my father to do that for me,” Thor protested. 

Sif arched a haughty eyebrow. “I certainly don’t need my brother to terrify you all bumbling younglings.”

“Bumbling younglings?” Fandral scoffed. “You’re younger than all of us. Except maybe Hogun, I don’t know how old he is, he might be immortal.” 

Hogun said nothing, his standard response to stimuli. 

Thor shook his head and turned back to the field, just as his father was coming up the slope towards him. He straightened, alert. 

“Well,” Odin said, nodding as the Warriors Three and Lady Sif greeted him. “A truce has been reached. Laufey bids us not hurt his son.”

Thor felt himself relax, “So Loki was mistaken after all.”

“So it appears. Laufey gave me this letter for him,” Odin gave Thor a small envelope, which Thor took and glanced at without opening it. “We will finalize details and return home within the week.”

“What of the strategist?” Thor asked as his father moved past him. 

“He has escaped with his life and is considered a traitor to be executed upon sight.”

“Ah,” Thor nodded. “That is one problem taken care of.”

“If he means to keep to that word,” Sif replied. 

“Indeed,” Odin agreed, and paused for a moment to smile at Volstagg. “By the by, I have been thinking of your proposal of how to better the realm,” he said. Volstagg’s eyebrows shot up. “It has merit, I do believe.”

Odin walked away, and Volstagg broke into long, loud peals of laughter.


	3. Salt Water Burn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, I understand as it is now Thor's attitude can be off-putting, but I intend to address that as the fic progresses. He's not perfect. He's caught up on his on views of the world. He's also a terribly pragmatic individual, as opposed to cunning, back-stabbing, grudge-holding Loki.

“Have you truly never been on a ship?”

Loki gave him a sour look, huddled miserably against the prow beneath Thor’s thick pelt cloak. 

“How do you suppose I would have done so in a land of snow and ice?”

Thor crouched down, elbows on his knees, and smiled. “With some difficulty, I will admit.”

The prince gathered the pelt closer to himself. The cold didn’t bother Loki, but the movement of the ship and the wet of the waves crashing against the hull seemed to make him dizzy and wretched. 

“It is only a week of sea-travel, Loki. I am certain you will survive.”

“What season is it in Asgard?”

Thor smiled. It was the first thing Loki had asked about Asgard of his own accord. 

“It’s spring, now. When I left, it was still winter. Asgard is beautiful in the spring.”

“Is it ugly in any other season?” Loki arched a brow. 

Thor turned and settled down on the deck next to Loki, stretching out his legs. 

“You do not have seasons in Jotunheim, do you?”

“Not for many ages,” Loki answered quietly. “The ice never melts.”

“How do you survive out there? We were there for two weeks and I did not see game or harvest.”

“There is game further out in the mountaintops. Sabers-lions and beasts, mostly, but some antelopes and white deer as well. Eastward the ice breaks and the lakes have fish. We commerce for vegetables and other valuables.” 

“Have you never considered migrating?”

“Migrating where?” Loki gave him a flat look. “To uproot and move an entire civilization, abandon our past, wander forever like homeless dogs in the lands of others?”

“You are a proud people,” Thor inclined his head. “It would serve you well to discard some of that pride, and open your arms and heart to your fellow brothers.”

“We have no brothers,” Loki tugged the pelt closer to his throat. “The Jotun stand alone. Always have, always will. We have long since been outcasts in the nine kingdoms.”

“No one but you remembers your offense,” Thor protested. 

Loki turned sharp eyes on him. “Yet you remember an offense took place.”

Thor was stumped. He had him there. 

Loki made a soft sound of distaste at him and turned away, bringing the pelt up to his cheeks, eyes half-lidded as they stared down at the wet deck. Loki truly was a stunningly beautiful young man, pale-skinned like any Jotun but with vibrant, alien green eyes. Most Jotun, Thor knew, had eyes blue like the summer sky. 

There were other differences that Thor had noticed as he familiarized himself more with the Jotun way of life. Jotun men wore their hair long and sported thick beards to shield their faces from the cold. They wore bracelets of silver on their wrists and ankles, at least one ring in each hand, and studs of solid metal in their ears and noses, some even in their brows. 

Loki had none of this. His hair was short and straight, his face clean shaven. He wore no adornments at all, not even those afforded to an apprentice priest, except the one necklace he had worn when Thor had taken him prisoner, a small delicate charm against ill-will the As prince sometimes caught him fingering absently. It seemed dear to him. Thor had no reason to take it. 

Thor didn’t know if Loki was set apart out of his own intent or by the will of his peers. He had not seen him interact with any other Jotun, except that one soldier, and them both prince and subject had stuck to their duties; the prince, to protect his subject, and the subject to give his life for his prince. Loki might have cared, and he might have not, about the man’s life; but he had known his duty towards him. 

For all he tried to appear cold and removed from everything, there was some warmth in Loki. Thor hoped to be able to find that fire and fan it; the throne would suit him ill, if he did not learn to show that there was a heart beneath all that hardened ice. 

Odin was similarly unsettled by the young prince’s cold demeanor. It was as if he had fashioned himself unreachable, and by virtue of his will had made it so. 

Thor sighed and got to his feet, walking the length of the boat to where his father sat beneath a tarpaulin, wrapped regally in a light grey pelt with a thoughtful expression on his aged faced. 

“It’s like feeding sweets to a panther, I see,” he commented when Thor nodded at him. 

The prince sighed gustily. “I give him kindness and in return I get half my fingers bitten off.”

“Your only hope is in the end he’ll grow soft,” Odin was trying, and failing, to hide a smile. 

“Or put a blade in my eye,” Thor replied. “And then where will you be? Less one son and plus one beast.”

Odin shrugged, “He’ll kill himself, more like. And I do have another son. I can spare you.” 

“Heartless,” Thor whined, stealing his father’s cup to take a long drink from it. “Gods,” he sputtered. “What is this, fire turned liquid?”

“Jotun wine,” Odin was smiling openly now. “Very strong, to keep out the cold.” 

“It’ll burn you from the inside like venom,” Thor grimaced, returning the cup. “It’ll be a gruesome and painful death, long and drawn out.”

“Be sure to burn my body, should there be any of it left.”

“No. I’ll throw you overboard and keep your crown.”

“Your mother will love that.”

“I can do no wrong in her eyes, I am golden and perfect. Did you not know? You ought to be paying more attention.”

“I think you’ve confused yourself with Baldr.”

Thor affected a scandalized expression. “Are you suggesting I am not the favorite son?”

“Not at all, Thor, not at all. You were the favorite son until your brother was born. Why, I do believe you had a good run of it.” 

Thor opened his mouth to reply, but then a wave crashed unexpectedly against their side, tipping the boat harshly. Thor surged forward, clenching his hands on the arms of Odin’s chair to ensure his father was not thrown out of it. Water drenched him, frigid and salty, stinging in his eyes and the dried skin of his lips. Odin’s hand fisted in the strap holding his son’s pelt to his shoulder, keeping Thor close enough to make sure he would not fall overboard. 

“Where did that come from?” Thor gasped, spitting water. 

The ship righted itself. Odin pushed him away, surveying the deck with quick, sharp eyes. He gripped Thor’s shoulder hard enough to hurt. 

“Lady Sif and Loki are gone,” he said urgently. 

Thor whirled around. Just then the cry came: “Men overboard!” 

Volstagg and he came to the board at the same time, slipping in the wet deck. Volstagg’s impressive beard was drenched and dripping. He was a good half head taller than Thor, and spotted them first, taking from Fandral the long rope they had tied to the mast. 

“There! Sif’s got him.”

Thor went to untie his pelt, and was momentarily disoriented when Volstagg shoved him brusquely away. Fandral took his place, tied the rope securely around his wrist and was over the board in an instant. 

“Why have you done that?” Thor demanded, keen eyes keeping track of Fandral’s movements. “I am a much better swimmer than him!” 

“You’re also the crown prince,” Volstagg snapped. 

“He’s got the right of it,” Odin said firmly, leaning on the board on Volstagg’s other side. “Men! Gather here, be ready to pull the rope.”

Thor gritted his teeth. They watched tensely as Fandral swam up to Sif and wrapped her up in his arms. Then Volstagg and the others began to pull, in long steady bursts of power that brought the three fallen shipmates closer to the side. They made sure to use the mast as leverage, bending the rope around it so that when Volstagg let go to drag them back onboard with Thor’s help, they would not lose them again. 

Sif and Loki were the first to be hauled aboard, crashing to the deck with wheezing breath and choking back water. Thor patted her back, pushing back her hair, desperate to hear her say she was _perfectly well, Thor, leave off, I am no delicate flower!_

Odin crouched down and turned Loki on his side, slapping his back until the prince had coughed out all the water he had inhaled, and lay shivering miserably on the wet deck. 

“I apologize, sire,” one of the sailors said urgently. “I never saw it coming.”

“No harm done,” Odin told him. “But be more alert. I will not have this happening a second time.” 

“No, sire, of course not.”

Odin waved the boy away, laying his hand, large and comforting, on Loki’s sharp shoulder. The prince shrugged him off, trembling like a wet dog, and pushed himself to a sitting position. Odin let his hand fall, frowning slightly. It wasn’t that the action itself was offensive—it was, naturally—but Loki’s expression, thunderous with anger, unwilling to be comforted by anyone. 

Thor’s stomach sank. He shot forward and gripped the front of Loki’s shirt, dragging him close. 

“Did you jump?” he snarled. 

Loki’s hand wrapped around his wrist. His jaw clenched. 

“Gods damn you!” Thor shook him harshly, so his head nearly lolled on his shoulders. “Sif could have drowned because of you!” 

“I never asked her to follow me,” Loki rasped through a throat burned with salt water. 

Odin stood, grey eyes dark. “Tie him to the mast.” 

Thor growled, standing and dragging Loki up with him. Volstagg wordlessly handed him a rope, and Thor tied it securely to the mast, wrapping it tightly around Loki’s wrists to tie him to it. Even in the red haze of rage that enveloped him, blurring his eyesight and tensing the muscles of his jaw, he had the presence of mind to slip his finger between the coarse rope and Loki’s wrists to make sure not to cut the blood flow. 

That was all the kindness he could spare him at the moment, and wisely spent the rest of the swell of fury well away from the Jotun prince. 

“I thought you had made it clear there would be repercussions to such actions,” Odin said, once Thor had calmed enough to have a civilized conversation. 

“I did,” Thor grunted. “But it appears his eagerness to end himself is direr to him than the well-being of his own brothers.”

Odin watched Thor quietly for a moment. “I do not think that is the case, my son.”

“What else could it be?” Thor demanded. “You heard it yourself, he meant to drown. He’d told me, not a minute ago, that he could not swim, that he never learned. He cares nothing for his life.”

“Thor, there is more to this than meets the eye,” Odin insisted patiently. “You have eyes, and you have a mind, when you are in the mood to use it. Pay attention. Loki is a young man, able-bodied and healthy, strong if thin and very clever. Do you really look at him and see someone who would gladly end his own life simply out of pride?”

Thor glanced over his shoulder at the Jotun prince, leaning against his hands tied to the mast, eyes closed and expression neutral. 

“Yet it is not pity he wants from me.”

“He seems to want nothing from you,” Odin pointed out, mildly. Thor gave him an unhappy look. 

“Well he will get much from me regardless,” he said tightly. “I will get to the bottom of this, father. I will know what wretched ideas cross his mind, that he may wish his own death more than he does life.” 

“I wish you the best of luck,” Odin said frankly. “I feel like you will need it. One more thing,” he added, stalling Thor from leaving his side. “Keep him leashed, will you not? I really don’t want to have to explain to Laufey that I lost his son to the sea.” 

“No one wants to face a father’s sorrow,” Thor agreed. 

“No,” Odin said heavily. “Nor risk seeing its absence in his face.” 

Thor glanced at his father curiously, but Odin had turned away and seemed inclined to say no more. The King of Asgard bowed to no wished but his own, so Thor knew insisting would be pointless. He turned, instead, to the thankless task of untangling ropes, letting the repetitive motions occupy his mind for a long while. Thor often found that such manual labor helped clear his head, detaching emotions from thoughts that would otherwise be difficult to process, so charged were they with feeling. 

Hogun eventually joined him, doing him the favor of twisting the ropes around his forearm to prevent them tangling again. They worked, like that, in companionable quietness, until the darkness fell and forced them to abandon the effort. 

In the darkness, Thor rose to check on his father. Lulled by the rocking of the shit, Odin had fallen asleep swaddled in his furs. Thor made sure they would not slip away from him and returned to Hogun’s side, sighing as he sat down. 

“What am I to do with a wolf that bites the hand that feeds him?”

Hogun shrugged. “Muzzle him?”

Thor gave him a look. 

“It’s a solution,” Hogun insisted, and grinned when Thor shoved his arm so hard he fell on his side. What followed can best be described as a wrestling match that ended, as anyone might expect, in a victorious Hogun—always slippery like an eel—demanding loudly that Thor surrender and declare him the greatest warrior that ever was. Thor, never quick to admit defeat, was not willing to do any such thing. 

The situation was only diffused when Volstagg threw his cup at Hogun’s head, with unfortunately accurate aim. The fight then transferred to the giant, who by virtue of being huge had very little room to maneuver. By the end of it Thor’s belly was sore from laughter, and a grin was branded in his face. 

The grin only wavered when he caught sight of Loki, lashed to the mast, eyes narrowed as he watched Volstagg and Hogun wrestle and roll around the deck. He was shivering from the cold air against his still-damp clothes. His hair was a dark tangled mess around his face, dried stiff with salt. 

“His lips are a ruin,” Sif commented, sitting down next to Thor. “You should give him water.”

Thor sighed. He could ask her to do it, of course, but it would be worst in the long run if he did. He knew he needed to build some sort of rapport with clever little Loki, if he wanted to get the young man to listen to him in Asgard. They would be working and living close together, and trust in one another would be necessary, but it would not birth itself out of thin air and wishful thinking. Nor would it, clearly, be born from Loki. 

He had every right to be angry with Loki—his antics this day could have cost Sif her life, and Sif was very dear to Thor. But Loki did not care for himself and would do nothing to better his situation, so if Thor wanted this to change, he would have to do it himself. Leaving anger and resentment aside when they were rightful and justified should not be Thor’s responsibility; it was an unfair and heavy burden. 

But Thor was a man grown, if young, whereas Loki was a boy. Thor was a crown prince and Loki a priest. If anyone ought to be the one to take the high road, swallow the bitter drink, and be mature, it would have to be the one that would one day rule a Kingdom. 

So Thor dragged a rough hand down his face, snagged the waterskin Sif was holding out to him, and trudged down the length of the boat to the main mast. Loki had brought his knees up and leaned them against the post, and though he was shivering in cold, he appeared to be comfortable enough. Thor snagged one of the furs from a roll on the deck and shook it open, draping it over Loki’s shoulders and securing it in place by tying the leather thongs at the collar. 

Loki’s jaw clenched. 

Thor’s teeth ground together, but with an effort he eased them away and relaxed his mouth. 

“You were shaking. I know you don’t like the wet. I don’t want you to get sick.”

“I am not sickly.” 

Thor frowned at the sharp tone. Loki looked absolutely miserable, but his eyes were still burning with something that would not bend or break no matter how hard it was pushed. Despite the anger and irritation, Thor was finding more and more that he liked that about the boy. 

He also remembered walking the streets of the Jotun capital city, enjoying the exertion of the high climbing streets paved with even stones. He had seen few children, but the few he had seen were strong and healthy, shaping up to be tall people. Sickly children most likely did not survive the harshness of the ever-lasting winter. Jotunheim was not kind to the weak. 

And there, he thought, was the crux of it. Loki would not welcome any suggestions that he was a weak person. No coddling, no concern, no offers of aid. 

It would be difficult to build any sort of friendship from such a barren ground, but Thor would have to make do. This was what he had and he would take it. 

“I believe Asgard will be very pleasant for you,” he said casually. “Its seasons are much warmer, and since you’re used to such harsh winters, ours ought to be nothing but a cold breath.” 

Loki’s green eyes saw right through him. 

“Keep your flattery,” he said flatly. 

Thor rubbed his hand over his mouth, suppressing the urge to wrap his hand around Loki’s neck and shake him like a broken doll. 

“Would you like some water?” he asked instead, words sibilant like a snake’s between his clenched teeth. 

For a moment, Thor saw Loki hesitate between his obvious thirst and his pride and will to hurt Thor by any means necessary, even if meant denying himself. By the looks of Loki’s rake-thin frame, he was accustomed to the last one. Thor could, of course, force the boy to drink, even if he wasn’t tethered to the mast as he was. But that would never end well. 

Finally, Loki nodded. 

With a deep sense of relief, Thor shuffled closer, spreading his legs to lean one knee against the mast and the inside of his other thigh against Loki’s back to keep his balance in the rolling ship. He would need both hands to hold the skin to Loki’s lips, and tilt it. Loki’s hands made an abortive motion to take it, but the rope held them firm, and his hands curled into fists. 

“I will not untie you,” Thor warned before the boy opened his mouth. “I cannot trust you.”

Loki made a face, but offered no reply. Thor settled the metal rim of the waterskin against his bottom lip and tilted its bottom up to let water trickle out into Loki’s mouth. A slow but deep roll of the ship made the metal rim slip and water spilled down Loki’s chin. With a low curse, Thor resettled it, and approved when Loki gripped it with his teeth. Thor was then free to manipulate the flexible waterskin with both his hands, regulating the flow of liquid. 

As he shifted the new angle offered him an unobstructed view of Loki’s long throat as he swallowed. Thor found his eyes pinned to it. He hadn’t yet been around Loki enough to get accustomed to the sight of him, to his graceful masculine beauty, and learn to ignore it. It was easy for Thor to overlook other people’s beauty, like Fandral’s or Sif’s once he was used to their company and knew them well. He was relatively certain that would also come to be the case with Loki, once the initial physical fascination settled down. 

Loki made a low sound, eyes narrowing. Thor carefully took the waterskin away, corking it. After only a momentary hesitation, he reached out and wiped Loki’s chin from the spilled water so he’d not be even colder. 

The priest flinched away. 

Thor frowned in irritation. “I am not going to hurt you, Loki.”

But he could see that no matter how many times he said that, Loki would not believe him. Thor was not accustomed to having people doubt his word, and the idea of having to defend himself made him bristle. Yet it was becoming quickly evident that Loki did not believe in words backed by honor or heartfelt promises. 

Loki was a cold man, and he moved in a world of fact and proof. His trust would have to ne earned painstakingly. 

Still, Thor thought there was one thing he could do to begin to smooth the road. 

“Use your logic,” he said calmly. “What benefit would it report me to hurt you? You are to be an attendant at my court. Would I want a scarred man at my side?” but he realized quickly he would; most Asgardians bore battle scars. He barreled on before Loki could sneer, “ Or even a wounded, weak one? I am to be the King of Asgard. I would watch those in whose company I indulge, and I would see them proud and deserving of the respect of my people. I mean for you to be an example of how noble and tall a Jotun can stand. I would not undermine myself by injuring you.” 

That was straightforward enough, Thor thought, that anyone would have to agree with him, even clever, contrary little Loki. 

He was also realizing he was beginning to refer too much as that. Loki was younger than him, but likely not by many years. He needed to start treating him like a man rather than a boy. 

Loki, staring blankly at his hands tethered to the main mast, seemed to be considering his words. Thor waited patiently, slinging the waterskin over the curve of his right thigh, the one pushed up against the mast. Only then did he become aware of how warm Loki’s fur-covered back was against the inside of his left one. He knew he should move away, because he was too intimately curved over the younger man, but moving away _now_ would mean drawing attention to it when Loki seemed to be ignoring it. The moment the Jotun was aware of it, Thor knew, he’d sneer and fling an insult. There was calm between them now; Thor was reluctant to disturb it. 

“You have every opportunity to hurt me in place where it cannot be glimpsed,” Loki said, startling him. 

Thor was confused. “Why would I hide injuries I myself have inflicted?”

Now Loki did sneer. “To hide them from your precious people.”

The crown prince of Asgard continued to be confused by this notion. “To what purpose? If I was to punish you, I would do it in the Asgardian fashion; lashes to the back, as any other man. You would wear them nobly to show that you have paid for your mistake and it would all then be forgiven. If I hid them then no one would know you have been corrected, and the anger of those you have wronged would linger.”

The thought turned itself over in Thor’s mind. To do that would be cowardly and petty, cruel even. It would leave Loki exposed to the disparaging of the court, since they would believe he had wronged and gone unpunished. Asgard did not tolerate well such things. 

Neither, Thor thought grimly, would Jotunheim. 

“No. That is not how things are done in Asgard,” he said firmly, left hand gripping Loki’s shoulder, The man moved away, but tied to the mast and still trapped between Thor’s legs, he could do little to disentangle himself, and soon was well aware of it, abandoning the effort. Loki despised making himself look foolish, Thor realized. 

“We will treat you fairly, Loki. If you do well, you will be rewarded, and if you do wrong, you will be punished. That is the right way of things.”

“Is that how you train your hounds?” Loki bared his teeth. 

“I, too, have been lashed,” Thor said hotly. 

“You?” Loki laughed. It was a nasty sound. “You, golden son of Odin, crown prince of Asgard, heir to the throne? You, said to be born out of lightning? You, _lashed_?”

“Yes, _I_ ,” Thor growled, fisting his hand in the fur and yanking Loki closed. The man’s mouth clicked shut, eyes turning to clear green ice. “I have also learned the laws of Asgard, as well as any other. Commoner and prince are equal in the eyes of the Gods, and in those of the King.” 

Loki said nothing, but there was disdain and disbelief in his eyes. Thor can see nothing he says will get through to him, that he not listening at all. He will not be believed no matter his vehemence. With a disgusted grunt, he shoved Loki away and stood, gripping the waterskin tightly in his hand as he walked away and threw it in Sif’s lap wordlessly. 

Odin was awake now, sipping mildly from a cup of wine. Thor reached out, snagged it, drained it, and tossed it away. He winced at the sweet aftertaste. Odin had a terrible sweet-tooth. 

“Sleep, old man. I can tell none will come to me this night, and one of us ought to rest.”

The King gave him a bland look, wrapping the furs more tightly around himself. “That wasn’t wine, dear, stupid son. That was sleeping water.” 

Thor released a long string of curses and sat down heavily at his father’s feet. He’d rushed the water, which meant he’d be stomach-sick all the following day, and his mind was clouding already. He rolled his head back to fall on his father’s knees, back pressed against the man’s calves. 

“You have gifted me a snake, and his venom tires me.” 

“Not a snake, or a wolf, or a hound, Thor,” Odin said gently, stroking his son’s hair and looking at him upside down. “A lost and broken boy. Think about that. Sleep now.”

Thor would have argued, was sleep was inexorable. The next day, by afternoon, they would reach the fjords and, beyond their protective prickling walls, the shores of Asgard. Him, his father, his men, his friends, and his new and thorny charge.


	4. Chapter 4

Asgard received them with the glory that emerging victorious from a long and miserable campaign afforded them, and Thor basked in it for a while. His stomach was still cramping, but the sickness of the sleeping water combined with the motions of a sailing ship had passed. In their wake they had left him weary and exhausted, and he had had nothing to eat all day, but he was glad to be home, and on firm ground. 

His mother and his brother Baldr greeted them in the sand. The little boy crashed against Thor’s chest when the warrior crouched down to hug him. Normally he would hoist him up, but he was still shaky from sickness. He hugged him tightly instead, inhaling his clean boy scent. 

Frigga unwrapped hr arms from around her husband briefly to hug her son. 

“Welcome, and well met,” she smiled. 

“Thank you. Mother, I have heard the most distressing news,” Thor shook his head sadly. “A raven has told me I am no longer your favorite son. My heart is broken.”

“What a decrepit confused raven that must be,” said Frigga, eyes bright, patting her husband’s arm. “But to be fair, dear son, you had a good run of it. Old things must give way to the new and bright.”

Thor sniffed and pointed a finger in her nose,“ _You_ are as mean as _he_ ,“ turning the finger to Odin’s face, “is decrepit.” 

“What is drekepit?” Baldr asked, wide blue eyes blinking up at Thor in adoration. 

“Our father,” said Thor. 

“Your brother’s poor brain is bruised,” Odin shook his head morosely. “You know these things happen in battle to the dimwitted, Baldr. You must treat your brother kindly now, and speak slowly so that he will understand.”

“The both of you are animals,” said Frigga, urging Baldr to move away in the direction of the wide, sprawling city of Asgard. “Please do _me_ the kindness of not ruining my last remaining sane family member.”

“I notice you fail to count yourself among the sane, wife,” Odin grinned impishly. 

“That also is your fault, Odin One-Eye,” Frigga arched a haughty eyebrow at him, and laughed loudly when the King leaned down to plant a resounding, smacking kiss upon her smooth cheek. 

Thor would love little more than to join them as they head to the city, traversing the road that cut a path through the mountain chain that nestled and protected the capital city. But there were still things Thor needed to oversee, not the least of which was Loki, still tied to the main mast and looking utterly exhausted. 

Then Volstagg’ arm was around Thor’s shoulders, and the red-haired man turned the prince to the road firmly. 

“We’ll make sure your sharp-tongued charge gets to his room. You go on ahead.”

Thor protested. “It is my duty to oversee his transport and welcome him into the castle. I am—“

“Thor, you’re still shaking,” Fandral tugged at his wrist. “The wolf’s got a good leash on him. Remember you still need to be greeted by the people and then the council. Do you really want to add more delays to it all?”

They made a good point. Thor was drained, and he still had many social duties to attend to along with his father, none of which could be spared until the next day. Introducing Loki to his chambers and the castle sounded like something he could hardly manage. He was drawn to Loki, but the boy was exhausting.

He caved, and allowed the boisterous warriors crowding the road to lead him, cheering, to the city. 

It followed an endless stretch of hours blurring together. He nodded and smiled and clapped back and squeezed hands and shoulders and arms, raised his weapon in a weary arm for the loud screaming cheers, stood at his father’s side calm and composed as Odin spoke. In the council he stood at his shoulder, feet spread and arms clasped behind his back, relaxed, intent on not swaying on his feet, as Odin briefed the councilmen on the most important points of the campaign and explained Loki’s situation. 

Excused at last well into the night, for the feast would only take place once all ships had arrived—an event that would stretch over the course of several days—Thor skipped dinner and collapsed, exhausted, on his bed. 

When he woke the following day, he was absolutely ravenous. Taking a bath was definite necessity, but Thor was too hungry to wait, so he settled for rinsing his head and arms and headed for the mess hall to break fast with whomever he may there find. To his delighted surprise he found Fandral and Sif, and joined them eagerly on the table, devouring food as though he had starved for months rather than a week. 

Fandral looked at him, amused. “It is heart-warming, if somewhat upsetting to the stomach, you see your appetite has returned.”

Thor swallowed a mouthful of buttered bread. “I _hate_ sleeping waters.”

“Then stop stealing your father’s cup,” suggested Sif. Her long dark hair was lose and wavy over her shoulders, and she looked relaxed and fresh. 

“Stealing from him is amusing,” Thor countered. 

“Also amusing is when he takes his revenge,” Fandral agreed pleasantly. 

The games Thor and Odin played were well known by the court, which by this stage knew when to expect one or the other to play the most entertainingly childish of pranks upon the other. That the two most important men of the kingdom could stoop so low as to smear paint on one another’s doors in times of peace because one or the other had said something stupid relaxed the atmosphere for everyone. Made them human. 

Thor loved his father, but most of all, he admired him. Odin could hold the balance of the world in his fingers like a fine magician, approachable and kind when he could afford it and detached and severe when he needed to be. 

Thor _had_ been lashed. 

“Oh,” he blinked, remembering. “What of Loki?”

“Threw him in a dungeon somewhere—“

Thor nearly dropped his cup. “ _Fandral_!”

“—no, I jest,” Fandral laughed, long peals of laughter spreading pleasantly over the hall. “I put him in a room in the servants’ wing, a fine one too. For good measure, though, I did chain him to the wall. A long chain. He can move around.”

“You chained him?” Thor was scandalized. 

Fandral arched a blond brow. “He tried to escape three times and then attempted to kill himself. Yes, I chained him to the wall.”

Thor growled and expletive and pushed himself to his feet, gesturing for Fandral to do the same. The Dashing heaved a pained sigh, drained his cup of warm tea and stood. 

_Chained_ , Gods be good, Loki would never let Thor live this down. What had Fandral been _thinking_? Even if Loki did escape—likely enough given his previous record—he’d have nowhere to go and no one to help him. Even if the soldiers in the city did not yet know him, they would have questioned him and delayed him enough that someone who _did_ know him would have eventually found him. He was a prisoner of war, not a slave. There was no need to add insult to the injury. 

The room Fandral had put Loki in was a good-sized one in a good area of the castle. It was farther in distance from Thor’s room than the prince would have picked himself, but on the other hand it might serve a new purpose. If Thor was to build any sort of friendship with him, trust needed to grow between them. With Thor breathing down his neck like an oversized bear, surely Loki would never learn to trust him. Maybe if he was given some breathing room Loki would grow less angry. 

Thor knew the situation was bad, but they were in it now, and they might as well make the best of it. 

Of course, that would probably be best conveyed _without a chain_. 

He stormed into the room, shoving the door open, and opened his mouth to apologize immediately—and stopped himself just in time. 

Curled on his side under the covers like a child, blankets covering everything down the straight lines of his eyebrows, Loki slept. Thor stared at the sight, at his relaxed dark brows and closed eyelids, lashes startlingly long. Followed the long trailing length of chain from where it fell from the edge of the covers, curled on the floor like a snake in coils of iron and ended firmly tethered to the ring on the wall where a servant would normally hang their dagger belt. 

Fandral was also stunned and speechless. In sleep, curled up and made small beneath the covers, Loki looked like nothing but a young boy. 

“How old is he?” gasped the Dashing, blinking. 

His voice in the quiet of the room, though low, woke Loki, and the priest’s eyes snapped open. A second later he was sitting up, chain clinking quietly. 

“A prince in a servant’s room?” he scowled. “Unbecoming, surely.”

A promising start to the day. Fandral cleared his throat and made a hasty escape, leaving the key to Loki’s manacle in Thor’s wide palm. The prince decided to push through Loki’s morning mood—hoping it was only a morning mood, but knowing that it probably would be this way for the rest of the day. If not years.

“I apologize,” he said, slotting the key in the iron manacle and opening it. The metal clanked against the stone floor as he threw it away. He couldn’t apologize fully without blaming Fandral, which he would not, so he settled for just that. 

Loki, however, did not seem bothered, and simply rubbed the skin of his wrist where it had reddened beneath the metal. 

“I expected a dungeon,” he said honestly. 

Thor huffed a short laugh. “Come, we will break fast and then I will show you the castle.”

Because a servant could not eat in the main hall, and Thor could not eat in the servants’s hall, they finally settled for a small alcove off the public mess. Thor drank more tea and ate bread and butter, and watched with a frown as Loki ate only very little, cautiously. 

“Is the food not to your liking? I know in Jotunheim you eat almost entirely fish. I am sure that can be arranged.”

“The food is acceptable,” Loki said flatly, and abandoned his plate. He had barely eaten. 

“There are no urgent matters to attend to,” Thor tried again, hoping to encourage the younger man to eat some more. “Please take your time.”

“I am satisfied.”

There was that stubborn clench of the jaw again, but the rest of Loki’s face had gone completely and utterly blank, devoid of any expression. It was eerie, like a lovely white-skinned mask. Thor decided to let the matter rest for now. He would have the noon meal with him, and watch that he ate more. He wondered if Loki would go as far as to starve himself, but pushed the idea away. Though poorly, Loki had eaten, and drank plenty of hot tea. 

The castle of Asgard was not as impressive as the towering, sprawling icy grace of the palace in Jotunheim, but the change suited it well, for it was a warm, familiar place as opposed to intimidating. He also felt that Loki would feel better here in the open rooms floored with warm wood, rather than in the dark bowels of the mountain temple. 

Thor at least knew _he_ would welcome the change, but then again Loki was a very different man. And, of course, the temple had been Loki’s home. Besides, being taken prisoner and dragged to another country did not exactly allow for a lot of changes to be appreciated, Thor supposed. 

Thor started form the servant’s wing, moving to the public halls and corridors, to the courter’s halls and salons, to the throne and state rooms, and finally to the royal quarters in the far wing. Once he had showed Loki where his own quarters were, he lead him out to the great gardens. Their glory was not as breathtaking now, snow-clad, as it was in the spring, but they were still stunning. And Thor knew Loki had never seen such things before; there were no plants at all in the frigid planes of Jotunheim. 

Loki proved to be as cold as the soils of his home. Though Thor was flawlessly polite and even warm, Loki remained prickly and silent, limiting himself to brief nods of understanding or agreement and complete lack of reaction for everything else. Thor knew better than to resent it, but it still troubled him. The other princes had folded more gracefully to their captivity, lead by pragmatism to accept the situation. Loki, however, did not seem inclined to accept anything. 

Thor was torn between annoyance and respect. For an allegedly discarded prince, Loki carried himself admirably. 

The gardens, though, finally made him break his arctic indifference. Thor watched, suppressing a smile, as Loki walked through the tall bare trees, stroking his hands over the rough bark, green eyes wide and fascinated, breath white plumes of steam between his parted lips. 

Thor wanted to speak to him, but he feared that a word would break the sort of peace the young priest seemed to have achieved there in the gardens. The cold of Asgard did not bother Loki, son of ice and snow, and though Thor was wrapped in a heavy winter cloak, the priest was still in his jacket and breeches, and appeared perfectly comfortable. The As clothing for servants, simple but warm, made Loki somewhat less exotic. Instead of the jades and blues of his priesthood, he wore now warm browns. His precious golden collar was hidden beneath his jacket. 

They wandered like that, quietly, through the gardens for a long time, with no sound between or around them except for the crunching of snow beneath their boots. Loki’s eyes were seldom still; Thor noticed he had the tendency to touch things delicately to inspect them, always careful not to disturb them too much. 

Several minutes had slipped by when a yell of pure joy shattered the piece, and Baldr came barreling from the direction of the private gardens. Thor threw his cloak over his shoulders and opened his arms to receive him, pivoting as the boy collided with him to twirl him, feet flying. 

It wasn’t until he’d settled a dizzy and giggling Baldr on the ground that he noticed his mother, wrapped in a blue winter cloak lined by snow-white fur, standing there smiling. 

“Mother,” he greeted, grinning. “Mother, allow me to introduce you. This is Loki Laufeyson of Jotunheim. Loki, my mother, Queen Frigga of Asgard.”

“My Queen,” Loki bowed his head, elegant, green eyes averted. The gesture was of course polite, but for the first time he met the Queen of a kingdom, rather brief. 

“Loki,” Frigga smiled. “I do hope you find your accommodations here in Asgard to your pleasure.”

“They are adequate,” replied Loki, and offered nothing more. 

The uncomfortable, tense silence stretched. Frigga’s smile remained, perfectly soft and inviting, but she was throwing her warmth at a towering wall of ice. Loki was not swayed. 

“You have not met my youngest, Baldr,” she said at length, resting her hands on the boy’s small shoulders in front of her. “Baldr, this is Loki. Loki is our guest and friend.”

“Prisoner,” was the curt, cold correction. 

“Loki,” started Thor. 

“Let us not lie to the child,” the priest said coolly. “Better he knows precisely where I stand from the start, so as to avoid future confusion.”

“Loki thinks he’s not our friend,” Frigga gamely amended to Baldr. “Your brother and father and I disagree. You may call him as you like. Would you like him to be your friend?”

Loki’s jaw set hard, and he looked away, stubborn and aggravated. Baldr seemed torn. Thor waved a hand at him and shook his head. Any overtures of friendship from the boy would be terribly unwelcome by the young priest. Frigga’s brows arched. Without another word, Loki stepped away and moved idly through the trees. A dismissal if there ever was one. Disdain was obviously a weapon for Loki, and one he wielded well. 

“I do believe he dislikes me,” Frigga said mildly. 

Thor sighed. “Mother, I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize for other people. And it’s not your fault. Nor is it, I believe, his.”

The crown prince frowned, looking curiously at his mother. “What do you mean?”

“Hm,” Frigga blinked away her puzzled expression. “Only that he is very different from any Jotun I have ever met. I will see you at the noon meal, my son.”

Thor shook his head, “I will take it with Loki. Supper?”

“Supper it is, then.” 

Thor kissed her forehead and ruffled Baldur’s head, and finally, reluctantly, trudged through the snow in Loki’s wake. 

“You needn’t be rude to my mother,” he said low as he reached the priest, who was crouching down next to a small thorny bush, touching it delicately. 

“I owe her nothing,” Loki replied. “Nor you.”

“She was being nice to you. Are you incapable of accepting any sort of compassion at all?”

“I need not your pity, nor your mother’s,” Loki snarled, standing. His eyes were bright with anger, face animated with emotion for the first time all day. It was as if the anger gave him life; when he allowed it, his face was very expressive. 

Thor’s temper flared. “Are you so damaged you can’t tell the difference between gentleness and pity?”

He regretted it immediately. Loki hung suspended in shock for a moment, and then automatically shuttered his expression, eyes growing dead as stones. Thor cursed to himself. 

“My apologies. That was not—“

“I am cold. Let us go back inside.”

It was a blatant lie. Loki wasn’t even attempting the politeness of an excuse. Thor gritted his teeth and nodded, jerking away from the priest to lead the way up the path back into the castle. 

“You have not told me my duties as your servant yet.”

“Not my servant,” muttered Thor, shaking snow from his boots. Loki was far too sharp-tongued for that, damn him. “A court attendant. And I don’t know what your duties may be yet.”

As he straightened he run a rough hand down his face wearily, letting the anger go with an exhale. 

“Do you have any particular talents?”

Loki sneered. “Many. None that a brute like you may learn to appreciate.”

Thor arched a brow. “I will take that to mean scholarly pursuits. Priests are educated men, are you not?”

Loki remained stony and silent. 

Thor gave him a testy look. “I need to know if I am to give you duties appropriate to your abilities, rather than have you clean stables for the duration of your stay here.”

Loki stared for a moment, and finally conceded with a tilt of the head, perhaps swayed by the prospect of such unpleasant manual labor for years on end. 

“Yes. Of course we are. In Jotunheim education is not widespread, so we are the ones who write and translate and copy the books and scriptures.”

“Translate?” Thor leaned forward, interested. “You speak several languages?”

“ _Obviously_ ,” Loki scorned. “I speak all the languages of the great kingdoms.”

Thor frowned. “Was that taught to you as prince or priest?”

Loki’s voice was a breath of frost. “I am _not a prince_.”

The crown prince gritted his teeth, but decided to let it go. For now. 

“Education in all those languages is also uncommon in Asgard,” he said instead, smile spreading. “We could use a scholar, I believe. Come, we will speak to the book master.”

Thor had thought Loki looked open and vulnerable in the gardens, but it was nothing compared to what he looked like in the vast royal library, amongst the leather-bound books and meticulously rolled scrolls. Here his eyes shone bright and delighted, and he moved expertly between the tight shelves, never touching anything, fingers dancing inches away from paper and leather. 

The As prince found himself watching him again, following the long line of his neck as he bowed his head to examine a title, looking at his elegant thin fingers, studying his lips as he mouthed foreign words. 

Gods damnit. This was a dangerous fixation Thor was developing. They had spent all morning together, and not once had Loki been anything but frigid. Thor’s fascination with his exoticism ought to have dissolved now, Loki’s attitude acting like cold water on a flame. Yet Thor felt every bit as compelled by him now as he had when he had first set eye on him on the temple. 

It did not bode well. 

“Well, he should be perfectly welcome,” the book master said, joining Thor in his watch over the Jotun priest. “He seems to enjoy himself well enough, here, and that is always a good sign for an attendant. You say he speaks and writes several languages?”

“The great nine and the alltongue, at least,” nodded Thor. 

“Oh. Oh yes, he will be very useful indeed.” 

Thor let the two of them speak for a long time, bewitched by the sight of Loki vibrant and alive. Like this, interested and heartfelt, he truly did look like a boy, and not a bitter young man. Most of the things they spoke of eluded Thor’s understanding entirely, so he let himself fall into an idle state, lulled to peace by the even, rich cadence of Loki’s pleasantly accented voice. 

He only blinked out of the drowsy daze when he realized the light was full on the sky. It was noon already. 

Prying Loki from the library took effort but it was finally achieved when Thor promised both to him and the master that he’d let Loki return after the meal. Thor hoped to make Loki eat more this time around, but again Loki ate sparsely and cautiously, as if he feared the food to be poisoned. Any attempts to encourage him were met with frosty silence. It was not that he disliked the food, or that it made him ill, either, for what little he ate he did with pleasure. 

Thor could not puzzle it together. Despite his dissatisfaction, however, he could not force him to eat, so he held his peace and said nothing when Loki excused himself from the alcove to return to the library. 

Unsettled, Thor sought out his father. 

“Priests are stoic creatures,” shrugged the King, once Thor had exposed the issue. “Perhaps he is simply accustomed to frugality. So long as he does not fall ill, I do not think it would be wise for you to insist. He’ll only grow angry. And Thor, do give the poor lad some breathing space. You did take him prisoner. I imagine he does not want you trailing after him at all times.”

Thor chose to heed the warning, and instead of going to the library he took himself to the other end of the castle, to the training grounds, where he found the Warriors Three and Sif, and spent with them the rest of the day as if life had not changed in the last.


	5. Nobody's Son

Loki scanned the letter several times, as if to confirm what it said, and finally put it down on the table, looking skeptical. 

“They claim you have kidnapped the King’s daughter,” he said neutrally. “Her name is Idunn. They believe that you took her for her apples.”

A long moment of incredulous silence. 

“Is that some sort of euphemism?” Odin asked. 

“It doesn’t appear to be,” Loki replied, left eyebrow lifting minutely. “It seems as though they mean precisely as they say.”

Another silence. 

“They think we abducted and kept their princess because she grows really good fruits?” Thor gaped.

“That, or they have a poorer grasp of their language than I.”

“Those apples must be really impressive,” said Thor, struggling to keep a smile back. 

Odin’s brows arched. 

“Are you quite _certain_ that is what it says?”

“I am.” Answered Loki flatly. “Perhaps, however, you would like to abduct some other dwarf to help you translate it instead of me. I do suppose Idunn is feeling lonely.”

Thor laughed. Odin threw him a testy look on par with the one he threw the Jotun priest. Thor noticed the tense line of Loki’s shoulders, and the white-knuckled grip on his own wrist behind his back. Why was he so tense? Was it because he was in presence of the Council?

Odin waved a hand. “Thank you for the attitude, Loki. I don’t have enough of that with my own family, I need to get it from guests, too. Now please write down what I tell you.”

The As prince saw Loki start, shocked, but the movement was turned into a smooth one as he leaned down to grasp the offered quill and paper. Thor admired the golden morning light falling over the jutting bone of his thin wrist, and his long elegant fingers as he wrote in the great loping runes of the language of Nidavellir. 

“Apples,” one of the councilmen was shaking his head. “Who would have thought it?”

“Certainly not I,” answered Odin, spreading his hands. “No fruit, no matter its sweetness, can get me to abduct a princess.”

“These dwarves take their apples very seriously,” Thor told Loki heavily, nodding, holding back his mirth.

Odin scowled at him. Loki for his part simply gave him a neutral, blank look, and said nothing. Thor considered that as Odin told Loki what to write, a short letter in which he admitted in flowery words that he had no idea where the Hel Idunn and her apples were, or why anyone would take her, and that Asgard loved Nidavellir well, and Odin was willing to send soldiers should they need any aid in the search of the true culprit. 

Loki wrote quietly, and only sometimes pointed out this or that word did not translate into dwarven language and had to be replaced by a different one. He wrote easily, evidently fluent, and when he had something to say it was quick and to the point. 

It was entirely possible, of course, that Loki was telling the Dwarf King that Odin was keeping Idunn for his own pleasures, so he made sure to remember to make someone else with a grasp of runes read the letter before it was sealed. Even if the details eluded them, the general message would be deciphered, and if Loki was trying to pitch Nidavellir against Asgard, they would know it. He glanced at Odin, and found his father watching Loki closely. Perhaps he was having the same idea, because his eye flicked down to the letter several times, alert. Odin was a lot of things; gullible was not one of them.

Once Odin has taken the letter and put it aside for the moment, Thor drew Loki away from the table, forcing himself not to mind when the younger man shrugged coldly away from his hand. 

“You do not know what an apple is, do you, Loki?”

The Jotun’s jaw set. “I do.”

Thor sighed. “Loki, I know you have no fruits in Jotunheim.”

“That does not mean I do not know what they are,” snapped Loki. “I am not like you, who ignores everything but that right in front of your own eyes.”

The prince breathed in. “Would you like to taste one?”

Loki paused. 

“We do not grow them here this time of year, but we trade for them and they are available. Shall we get some for you to eat?”

The priest hesitated. “I ought to get back to the library.”

“The master of books doesn’t know you are dismissed from the council room already.”

Loki’s face grew grim. “It will be me that will be lashed for it.”

Thor gaped. “Lashed? Why the Hel would the master of books take a whip to you? It is not—“ he stopped abruptly, eyes narrowing. “You think I would delay your return just to have you punished?”

“Would you not?” challenged Loki.

“No!” burst Thor, furious. “To think of playing such—tricks, such _treachery_ , and for what? To get someone to hurt you? To what _purpose_?”

“I know not,” Loki seethed, walking away. “I know nothing of how you think or what you desire from me.”

“I desire nothing but for there to be peace between us,” Thor insisted angrily, gripping his arm to whirl Loki around to face him. He saw Loki tense immediately, hand curling into a fist and face growing completely expressionless. But the priest did nothing to attempt to defend himself or slip away. Where was the combative attitude from the temple? Did Loki not know how to defend himself without a weapon? Frustrated, he released the priest and gave one step back. Thor was well aware of how intimidating he could be, s big as he was, and he didn’t want Loki to feel caged. More caged, damnit. 

“I will go with you to the library and excuse you to the master of books, if that would give you peace of mind.”

Loki’s eyes were narrowed and shrewd. “Why?”

“I just want to have an apple!” Thor threw up his hands, exasperated. “It is a fruit, not a capital sin!”

Loki’s expression was still cold and stubborn, but Thor could tell he was curious about it. He kept his silence as the priest weighed in the risks and recompenses, and finally nodded shortly. 

“You _will_ come to the library.”

“Yes,” Thor nodded with relief. “I will speak on your behalf, but you will see that it is not necessary.” 

Loki did not reply, but he followed Thor without complain through the halls until they reached the castles’ kitchens. A servant girl readily agreed to get them some from the ice-room. Thor gestured for Loki to sit to the small table by the wall and joined him, stretching out his long legs and leaning his head against the wall. 

Loki was silent, sitting primly with his legs crossed and fingers laced on his lap, staring at the table. He was the picture of restraint. 

Thor took the moment to study him. Though thin, Loki was not small. He was tall, and still would grow taller, if his shoulders were any indication. Had he been trained from a young age in the arts of war, he would be a fine warrior, for he had long, strong limbs, and a sharp quick mind. He carried himself, however, like someone who not only did not know how to defend himself, but expected danger and pain to haunt him at every corner. Thor knew Jotunheim was a harsh place, but this was excessive. Loki was the son of a King, born to privilege and raised to responsibility. And he was able-bodied and smart man; surely he was a treasure for his nation, something to be protected. Not tormented. 

Why then did he fear punishment for every act?

The girl came back with a platter with sliced apples. Thor would have liked to give Loki the whole fruit for him to bite onto, but if this was what they got, he’d take it. He picked up a slice and popped it into his mouth, chewing absently as he still turned the subject of Loki’s attitude in his mind. 

Loki grasped one of the slices carefully, examining it closely before carefully taking the smallest, most delicate bite. Thor forced himself not to stare at his thin lips, or at the motion of his long throat once he swallowed. The second bite was more confident, and soon Loki was picking up another slice. 

Thor realized with a start that this was the most he’d seen him eat in the week he’d been in Asgard. He sat up, blinking, and grinned. 

“You like them well, then?”

It was a mistake. Loki’s eyes grew cold as ice. He finished the slice and did not touch another, even though Thor protested and insisted he ate some more. He’d not even had a full apple. There was no point though, for Loki did not yield, and the more Thor insisted, the more distant the younger man grew. 

Finally Loki snapped that it was about time he returned to his duties. Frustrated, Thor stormed his way to the library, told the master of books shortly that Loki had been with him and no consequences should arise from his tardiness—the master looked understandably bewildered—and left without another word. 

He found Sif and Fandral sitting on the stone steps to the great courtyard, chatting idly as they sharpened their swords in the sunlight. He slumped on the steps below them and groaned when prodded. 

“Your dog bit you again?” Fandral asked sympathetically. 

“He’s not my dog, stop that.” Thor protested, sitting up. “But yes, he did bite me.” 

“What awful thing did he think you did to him now?” asked Sif. 

“I gave him an apple, which he had never had before.”

Fandral arched his eyebrows and widened his eyes dramatically. “The _nerve_.” 

Thor ran a hand through his hair. “I do not know how I offend him all the time.”

“He’s eager to be offended,” Sif shrugged. 

“He’s a sensitive petal.”

“The two of you are no help,” Thor growled. “I am meant to get along with this boy, so that when we are kings, our nations are friends and we have peace. How am I supposed to do that if at every turn he feels slighted?”

“I do not think he feels slighted every time,” Sif replied. “I think he is a suspicious creature and is used to watching his own back. There’s also the fact we did kidnap him and drag him along to some other country. One might somewhat resent that.”

“Yes, thank you. I am not a blind oaf, Sif, I know that. But as to his suspicious nature—he is a prince! Who could want to hurt him?”

“He does not call himself son of a king,” Fandral reminded Thor. “And if he does not, who amongst the Jotun would? Maybe he fears a knife to the back every time he turns, and maybe he is right to.”

Thor wiped a hand down his face. 

“How am I to get through to him? At ever sympathy he bares his teeth and snaps.” 

“Maybe he doesn’t want sympathy,” said Sif firmly. “Perhaps instead of trying to ‘get through to him’, just _be_ with him. Do you want him to be your friend, or your pet? Those two are not earned the same way, Thor.” 

Chastised, Thor nodded. 

Sif sighed. “He flinches every time anyone touches him, Thor. I know you to be an affectionate person, and I know his rejection must sting, but you must be patient with him if you truly hope to have peace between Asgard and Jotunheim.”

“ _If_ he becomes king,” Fandral pointed out, lifting a single slim finger. “Let us remember the boy was in a temple, not a palace.”

“He is the eldest living son,” said Thor insistently. “If Baldr cannot inherit the crown before I do, then surely Helblindi cannot inherit the Jotun crown before Loki.”

“Not if Loki is in the succession line, but if he was removed—“

“Removed by what means and under which law?” 

“Thor, I do not know the laws of Jotunheim, and neither do _you_ ,” Fandral gave him a calm look. “If you trust him to have free roam of the castle without supervision, should you not trust him to tell you the truth, when the lie would prove more perilous?”

But Sif was unconvinced. “Why would Laufey let us take a son he sees no value in?”

“Removing him from the crown line doesn’t necessarily mean he wants him dead,” reasoned Fandral. “He is still his son, he would still love him.”

Or would he? Thor remembered Loki’s conviction that his father would let him rot, and Odin’s concern that the Jotun king would not mourn his son’s death. 

“Loki is healthy and smart,” he said quietly. “What would prompt Laufey to remove him from the line, when he would make a fine king?” 

Sif and Fandral shared a look. 

“Something really bad,” said the Dashing grimly. 

Thor stayed with them for a while longer, idly planning a hunting party soon. At nightfall he took his leave from them, seeking out his mother in her moonlit parlor, sewing beneath the light of a torch. 

“Mother,” he greeted as he leaned down to kiss her cheek. “What do you know of the laws of Jotunheim?”

Frigga blinked. “Barely anything, my son. You ought to ask a scholar—or, and this is a mad suggestion, I know, your charge, Loki of Jotunheim.” 

Thor gave her a look to cut through her sarcasm. “Loki will not answer me directly, as you well know. And I am reluctant to bring this to the attention of the scholars.”

The Queen tilted her head, gesturing for Thor to take a seat next to her. 

“You want to know something about Loki, but you do not want Loki or the scholars to know of your curiosity. Why?”

Thor leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and spreading his hands. “When I first took Loki prisoner, he insisted he had been removed of the crown line and his father would leave him to die.”

Frigga frowned. “Was he very convinced?”

“You could no more shake that belief that you could convince him ice is not frozen water.”

The Queen’s brows arched delicately. “But you are concerned that, if he truly bears no weight in Laufey’s decision, he is of no use for Asgard to keep—not as a guest, in any case. We can still keep him regardless; plenty of space in the dungeons. Or the vault, for another useless relic.”

Thor nodded slowly. 

“Are you concerned for the well-being of Asgard, or for that of the young priest-prince?”

The prince looked at her. “Both.”

Frigga smiled. “I will find out for you. How _is_ our cold guest faring?”

“Poorly,” answered Thor. “But I admit to having a part in his distress.”

Frigga laughed lightly. “Awareness of one’s flaws is a step towards improving. Patience, my darling son.”

Thor understood her advice, as well as Sif and Fandral’s. Paying more attention to the way the priest moved across the corridors when he thought none watched, it became evident he feared a blade in every shadow. The sword Loki had been wielding the day they met had been completely inadequate for him, but that didn’t mean Loki was helpless; whenever they lingered at the table after a meal, attention arrested by one or other passing warrior, Thor saw Loki’s hand idly manipulating sharp knives with the ease of long practice. 

The younger man was slight of build; perhaps true and straightforward combat was not his forte, but rather the art of throwing knives and attacking from a distance. One afternoon, therefore, he went to the library and politely requested the master of books to let him take Loki with him. 

“My liege, do with him as you best please,” the master said, exasperated by all the surplus of politeness he’d been forced to endure of late. “He is a wonder and a gift, but he is also unnervingly quiet. He need not come here all day every day. Mornings will do.” 

Thor relished the release of the afternoon duties even though Loki did not, for it allowed him to have free run of the priest’s attention. It was not an opportunity he was about to pass up. 

That very same afternoon, therefore, he took Loki to the training grounds, to one of the smallest courtyards, and put in his hand a long leather whip. Loki flinched visibly, refusing to take it, but Thor would not budge. 

“Loki, you are weak,” he said patiently when Loki made to retreat. “And your weakness makes you wary. If you knew to defend yourself, you would be bolder.”

“I am strong in a way different than yours,” argued the priest, twisting his arm futilely. “I am smarter.”

“Yes, and intelligence is a gift, but it cannot shield you from a sword,” insisted the prince. “You like knives, do you not?” 

Loki stilled, eyes narrowing in suspicion. “What business is that of yours?”

“Have you been trained in throwing them?”

The priests’ eyes flashed with something, but his face quickly turned into an expressionless mask. Thor saw him grit his teeth in that way he was learning to recognize as reluctance to admit a failure or ignorance, and waited, silently, for the answer. 

“I have not,” he ground out at length. No, Thor had not thought he had. 

“I will teach you. But first you ought to learn to handle a whip. The motion of the whip and the throwing of a knife are not dissimilar. And a whip is safer for you to carry while you are still unfamiliar with it, rather than sharp knives that you might wound yourself with.” 

Loki pulled his arm away from Thor’s hand, frowning but interested. 

“You would let me carry a weapon?”

“I would have you call the guards if you find yourself in danger,” replied Thor. “But I know that you will not, and I am discomfited by you walking around—“ _defenseless_ was going to make Loki angry. Thor reconsidered his wording. He settled for, “unprepared.”

One of Loki’s fine black brows arched. “Is your castle not safe to walk in, then?”

“The castle, yes,” Thor said firmly. “But not so its outsides, and you are not confined within its walls. But I will not have you leave its premises without a way to guard yourself.”

Thor was struck by a sudden idea. He grinned. “Until such a time as I feel you can fair on your own outside, I will escort you wherever you wish to go. If I am unavailable, call for the Warriors Three or Lady Sif.”

Loki did not appreciate this, as Thor had imagined. “Surely a prince of Asgard has better things to do than act the jailor for the Jotun hound.”

Thor did not allow his temper to rise. Loki threw these things at his face as though they stabbed Thor in the chest, but the truth was they were more jabs at his own lineage than they were at Thor’s decisions. Which was telling. 

Now if only he could convince himself to stop laying his hands on the priest as he taught him to use the whip. In the gray light of the cloudy winter afternoon, Loki looked even paler beneath his well-combed black hair, his eyes a vivid summer green. He bit his bottom lip when the whip failed to do as he demanded, and paled whenever he missed the target and Thor touched him, as if he feared a blow as punishment. He quickly hid the fear, but Thor was beginning to pick up on it. Loki was at his most blank when he was most alarmed. 

By the end of the afternoon, Loki was weary with fatigue. Thor insisted he let him accompany to the evening meal, but Loki plead tiredness and retired instead to bed with an empty stomach. 

“Perhaps the Jotun eat very little?” Volstagg asked doubtfully at the table that night, when Thor expressed his concern. “You ought to insist. He is a growing lad, he needs to be fed well to grow strong and tall like us.”

“Even if the Jotun did eat sparsely, no one in their right mind would go to bed unfed after an afternoon of battle training,” Sif snapped. “Something is wrong.” 

“You cannot force him to eat,” Fandral shrugged. “And a whip is not as tiring as a sword. Perhaps he truly was not hungry.” 

“I tell you _something is wrong_ ,” Sif stressed, shoving at the Dashing’s shoulder. 

“Do you know of these things because you are a delicate sensible lady?” Volstagg asked, making a serious face. 

“I know of these things because I, unlike you worthless swinging _cocks_ , pay attention!”

Thor winced. “Peace, Sif. I will speak with Loki about it.”

“No,” the warrior lady scowled. “Do _not_ speak of it with him. Pay no mind to it at all, except to insist he goes to the table with you every meal, and make sure to eat healthy in his company.”

The prince spread his hands, “That is what I do!”

“No, it is not! You mind too much, pay too much attention.”

“Loki dislikes attention,” Hogun chimed in soberly. “He flinches from it. Act as though you have no noticed and, in time, he will right matters himself. His current habits are not debilitating. Yet.”

“We should all feast with you,” Volstagg nodded, swirling cider in his cup. “Act our normal merry selves, and ignore when he does or does not partake.”

A routine, then, was crafted. In the mornings Loki would break fast at the servant’s hall, then attend to his duties in the library. For the noon mean, Thor would get him, and he and the Warriors Three and Lady Sif would join at the table, never breathing a word when Loki ate only a few bites or failed to eat at all. Instead they would discuss many other things, loudly as they did discuss everything, and steer attention and mind away from scholarly duties and bodily necessities and into the territory of battle training and quests. 

Time wore on, and Thor let it. Loki turned out to be surprisingly adept with the whip, and soon Thor had to find him a better teacher. Relinquishing the duty was not pleasant, but he made it up by convincing Loki to assist training sessions with him and the Warriors Three instead. 

“He’ll be moving onto throwing knives in no time,” Fandral said one afternoon as they watched Loki destroy targets with a well-done flick of the whip. “He’s perfectly fit to carry that around already.”

“We should get him a fine whip,” Volstagg nodded, slapping his hand against the low wall they were leaning on. “As a gift and reward.” 

“I don’t think he’ll take well to gifts,” Sif said darkly. “Make sure to emphasize the reward part of it.”

Volstagg gave her a curious look. “Do you dislike him, Sif?”

“I dislike things _about_ him,” she corrected, straightening. “But none of them, I feel, are his fault.”

“He is getting better,” Hogun commented, and tilted his head speculatively. “Soon I will snag him for single combat. With those long legs he ought to be a fine one-on-one fighter.”

“Oh, I have a novel ideal,” Sif rolled her eyes. “How about we _ask_ him if he wants to learn these things?”

Hogun gave her a blank look. “Why should he not want to learn to defend himself?”

Thor wasn’t sure when Loki had become the object of interest of all of them, now suddenly so intent of helping him learn to defend himself. He didn’t think Loki relished it, but he had stopped being cruel to them at some point, so perhaps there was something there. He hadn’t exactly warmed up, so to speak, but he was silent now as much as he delivered callous words, and that was something of an improvement. A month prior, any word was met with malice. 

Then again, it could be that Loki was just taking the opportunity to train and planned to kill them all on their sleep. You never knew, with him.

“We can’t all have a go at him,” Fandral questioned. 

Hogun turned to him, blinking. “What would you take him for?”

“Well,” Fandral started, and Sif shoved at his chest before he could finish the idea. He was grinning already. 

“To _train_ him,” she growled. 

“That can _also_ be called ‘training’!”

“He is a priest,” Thor protested, and then felt mildly hypocritical. By the looked the others were giving him, the irony of it had not gone unnoticed. He winced. “Is it that obvious?”

“Only to us, Thor,” soothed Fandral. 

“ _He_ certainly suspects nothing,” assured Volstagg, gesturing to the Jotun man. “He’ll sooner believe you want to gouge out his eyes than bed him.”

“Such lovely eyes, too,” Fandral quirked his brows comically. Hogun slapped his shoulder. 

“I will order that whip,” Thor sighed, choosing to ignore the bedding comment. “We can give it to him next week. It’ll be a month since he came here.”

“I doubt he will love the reminder,” muttered Sif. 

Thor ordered a long bullwhip, which was what Loki was practicing with. There were other more beautiful options, but Thor didn’t dare ruin Loki’s accuracy by taking liberties with the length and weight, altering the balance. He made it black and simple. Loki dressed now entirely in black and wore not adornments but his precious necklace, so he didn’t think he would want an ornate weapon either. 

That night he had the evening meal with his family, and as he retired afterwards, his mother caught up to him. 

“I have looked into what you suggested,” she said quietly, drawing him away from Odin and Baldr. “And I have found there is only one reason a king could lawfully remove an apparent heir from the crown line.”

She paused to glance briefly at Odin, entertained playing with Baldr. When she turned back, her face was lined with concern. 

“He would have to prove incapable of producing an heir.”

Thor was shocked. “But he is only a boy, Mother.”

“It is tradition on Jotunheim for a man to have as many children as he can, as babes die often. Even at his age—and I do not believe him that much younger than you, Thor—he would have bedded women and hoped they would bear him a child. If this has not happened, it would give Laufey ample reason to do away with him.”

“And make him a priest,” Thor dragged a hand down his face. 

“But Loki is wrong, Thor,” Frigga grasped his wrist. “Laufey must love him. Otherwise, the treatment for those men who are not able to produce children is automatic death sentence.”

Thor’s jaw went slack with horror. 

“Jotunheim cannot maintain many people,” explained Frigga, eyes bright. “Those who are useless would be dealt with immediately. And Thor, there is something else. I do not think Loki is pureblooded.”

“What makes you think so?”

“His complexion. He is too pale, too tall, and too slight. And those eyes, Thor. No Jotun has ever had green eyes.”

She took a deep breath. 

“The Queen of Jotunheim lives still, Thor,” she murmured. “And she is most certainly Jotun.”

A weak slim runt, unfertile, and a bastard. 

Thor shook his head slowly, speechless. 

“Thor…” Frigga touched his arm gently. 

“Please do not tell Father,” Thor said numbly. “Let me. I will—I will handle it.”

“As you wish, my son,” the Queen said tenderly. 

Thor nodded and took his leave, mute with disbelief. 

He found Hogun and Volstagg sharing a jug of mead in the moonlight in the gardens, and joined them on the ground, staring at the bare-limbed trees as he revealed the truth to them. 

Volstagg stared at him, grim and pale. “What good is he to Asgard, then?”

The prince shook his head. 

“None,” he confessed, cold to the bone. “None at all.”


	6. Chapter 6

It was midmorning and the winter sunlight spilt across the clean wooden floors like honey spread on bread, gleaming as it crashed against the clever set of mirrors devised to keep the whole of the library illuminated even in the grayest of cloudy days. 

Thor sat to one of the long tables, head bent, eyes scrutinizing the tight runework of the volume open in front of him. 

He was so focused on his studies that he failed to notice Loki’s approach until he crossed the beam of light that fell upon Thor, making shade. Only then did Thor lift his head. 

“This is an unusual sight,” said Loki, dark brows arched. “What are you doing here?”

Thor made a negligent hand gesture. “Skinning a deer, obviously, like any other day in the life of your regular uneducated brute.” 

Loki gave him a flat glare. “Very clever.”

“I’m studying, Loki. Are you astonished I can read?”

“I do not think presumptuous of me to point out that the only times I have _ever_ seen you in here were to take _me_ away.”

“Well,” said Thor, turning back to his book. “This might shock you, but my whole life is not entirely devoted to your doubtful affections.”

“I am shocked,” murmured Loki, reaching out to the other book that lay closed on the table and turning it to take a look. “Asgardian law treaties. Heavy studying indeed, my lord.”

“I have something of a problem between my hands,” admitted Thor, sitting back and rubbing his eyes. “How well do you know your way around these shelves by now?”

“As well as a month of working here constantly can allow me to claim. As well as my own two hands.”

The polite thing would have been to offer assistance to Thor, or to ask politely of Thor required assistance; not that Loki ever did the polite thing. Thor was not surprised by the lack of civility, at this point, even though Loki did appear to make an effort to be courteous, if coldly so, to just about everyone else. 

“Would you be so kind as to bring me treatise on law, then?”

“What sort of law?” asked Loki, tilting his head. “I hardly expect you to be aware, but there are many sorts of law for many sorts of situations—“

“Yes, thank you, I am aware. This might astonish you, but I was raised to be a King someday, so I am vaguely aware of matters of state.”

Loki smiled poisonously. “You understand my hesitations on the matter, I expect.”

Thor gave him a cold look. “Underestimate me at your own risk, then.” 

That seemed to sober Loki up, and the smile melted beneath his usual cold, indifferent mask. 

Thor sighed. “You are a library attendant, are you not?”

“Not by choice,” pointed out Loki, but when Thor opened his mouth to protest, he waved him away. “But I can see how tragic it will be if I let you wonder these shelves unsupervised. You will ruin something, I am certain of it.”

“Probably.”

“What kind of law are you studying, then?”

Thor stared down at the volume in front of him. “Asgardian laws regarding foreign legislations.” 

“Oh, you recognize foreign laws? This is novel. I did not know of this. How fascinating. Surely a new—“

“Loki,” Thor interrupted, lifting a hand. “I understand. But please amuse yourself at my expense at another time and bring me the books.” 

The Jotun priest exhaled, displeased. “Very well. Sit here and do not move.”

“Not going anywhere,” muttered Thor, lifting the book and applying himself to his study. 

And he did not, for the next six hours, as the sun traversed the sky and finally sunk behind the mountains. Thor went through the books, diligently but slowly, making annotations in a long scroll and putting them in organized piles as Loki had brought them to him. Loki mostly left him alone, once or twice coming to take a pile of books away and drop a different one. 

Then he made the rounds, going around the library turning on the night lamps and finally pulled a chair and sat across the table from Thor, lacing his fingers. 

“What is it exactly you are looking for?” 

“I am trying to figure something out,” answered Thor distractedly, squinting at the page in front of him. The letters seem to blur in his eyes, becoming illegible. He blinked and scrutinized the page. Oh. It was in Svartalfar. He put the book aside, sighing. 

“Please make sure they are all in Asgardian when you bring the books. “My grasp of other languages is too poor in reading for me to decipher them.”

“I am not surprised by this.”

Thor ignored him, rubbing his eyes tiredly. 

“You have missed your afternoon training, and mine,” Loki continued, intrigued despite himself. “This has never happened before, not once.” 

“This is important.” 

Loki studied him momentarily. “I know little of law, but I know how to acquaint myself with matters of which I had previously little knowledge. Perhaps if you told me which legislation from which country is troubling you, I could be of aid.”

Thor would have loved to take him up on the offer—of course Loki was much better with books and studies than Thor, who lacked patience and practice—but he could not. On the one hand, he needed to know what he was dealing with precisely before the told Loki that he knew of his situation, because he knew Loki would not be pleased and a fan of possible solutions would be needed to appease him. On the other, Loki was not offering out of the dubious kindness of his heart, most likely, but rather because Thor had noticed he priest liked to know what Thor was up to, if only so that he could predict his movements and thus be never caught unawares. 

Loki, Thor had learned, was the kind of man who liked to be in full control of the things that surrounded him. Lacking that, then he at least wanted to be in complete knowledge. 

Thor shook his head. 

“Then you might as well abandon the endeavor for the evening,” Loki said pensively, eyes scanning the books quickly, all too sharp. “You have been here all day. Every scholar knows at some point, one must walk away from the table to clear one’s mind.”

“I am, as you know, no scholar.”

Loki’s mouth twists in a mocking smile. “No. But you know your gifts, and I know mine. You have taught me the ways of a whip. I can teach you the ways of your mind. You should leave, and walk the gardens, as you like. If a candle burns too long, it extinguishes.” 

Thor knew when to take advice, and what Loki was saying made sense. He could hardly remember what he had read in the last book, and would probably have to take a second look at it. He sat back in his chair, rubbing his face with his hands. 

“Can the books remain here until I return tomorrow?”

“I must put them away. But I will remember which ones you are yet to study.” 

Thor nodded wearily, and as he stood his spine made a chain of teeth-clenching noises. Thor stretched his arms over his head and rubbed his neck. Loki stood, gathering the books in ordered piles and glancing at him. 

Thor made a sheepish face. “Your back must be stronger than mine.” 

“All is practice, as you well know,” replied the priest, and the paused, looking at Thor strangely for a moment. “The whip master Vjalfar suggested I may be proficient enough to have my own whip. He insists I must ask your permission.”

Damn it. Thor had been avoiding giving him the whip, which he already has in his possession, for the last three days since his mother told him of Loki’s probable situation. He can’t think it would be a good idea to arm a man he might then had to disarm by his father’s order. Everything related to Loki so far Thor has handled himself, as per his father’s decision to make him Thor’s charge instead of his own, but the situation might well change if Odin is displeased with the knowledge Frigga and Thor now share. 

Thor liked to think he knew his father very well, knew his quirks and the way he thought, knew him well enough to predict his reactions and choices, but this was a new situation not even he knew how to navigate. 

“I will speak with him about it,” he settled on, dubious. 

Loki’s brows moved only an inch, and if Thor had not been watching him closely, he would have missed the twitch. 

“You said you would allow me to be armed to defend myself.” 

“I did.”

“Are you backtracking now, Odinson?”

Thor rubbed his forehead. “I said only that I must speak to Vjalfar. I did not say I had changed my mind, or that I had decided now not to allow you this. Which reminds me—“

He stopped. Hogun had asked him permission to start training Loki in body combat, but now—now everything had changed, and Thor had no idea where either he or Loki stood. He had given Loki as many liberties and freedoms as he could afford given the situation, and now he faced the very unpleasant possibility of having to revoke them if Loki’s status was subjected to a change. Would it not just make it worse, if he allowed him this, and then took it away? Loki and Hogun got along better than Loki and the rest of them, simply because Hogun did not expect Loki to be civil or even speak to him, unlike Fandral who always spoke, or Volstagg who was too rough. 

The fact that Hogun even offered is—such a privilege. Hogun is the best, most gifted one-on-one fighter in all of Asgard. If anyone can get Loki to be able to defend himself for everything, it sure is Hogun. 

What would Odin King do, Thor wonders. To have and possibly lose, or to never have at all? 

Then again—even if his status is revoked, even then, why not teach him to protect himself? Though tall, Loki is slender, and his beauty already attracts many eyes. Stripped of Thor’s direct protection, dangers that Thor’s looming shade shield him from might surface. These things are of course punishable by law, and Odin has had more than one guard decapitated on account of brutality against anyone who lives under his wing, where even the lowest slaves are to him people he must protect and keep safe. All who live under Odin’s roof are his responsibility, from the noblest councilmen to the most insignificant kitchen wench. So for all of that Loki should be safe. Yet—

“Hogun would like to train you in body combat, in his fashion,” he said, before he could continue tearing himself up over it. Loki’s brows arched. “He is a harsh master, and demanding, but it’s a great honor to be offered. You may of course decline, as it’s your right, but I’d like you to know that he means well.”

“Am I to be his pet project, when he is bored?” Loki asked flatly. 

Thor’s lips twitched up into a smile. “Hogun is never bored. Nor is he ever in possession of free time he must somehow occupy. I do believe I have never, once, seen him idle. But as for your question—no. His offer is genuine. I know a bit of Hogun’s mind, and I know it is against his principles to allow someone to exist without the ability to kick someone in the chin at the first provocation.”

Loki himself seemed to find that somewhat amusing, and for the first time, Thor saw him sketch a brief, small smile. The expression was fast replaced by one of contempt and suspicion. “And after, I suppose, Fandral will want to train me in swordfight?”

“Swords would be a poor choice for you,” Thor said distractedly. “Spear, I believe, would be best. But no, Fandral has nothing to teach you, and if he says otherwise,” he gave Loki an amused look. “you are welcome to break his nose.”

“I shall keep that in mind, to be sure.”

Thor laughed, and automatically patted Loki on the shoulder as he moved past towards the door. The priest, for once, did not flinch away. Thor left him to his duties, and quitted the library with his mind still clouded with doubts and worries, barely watching as he walked. He held the rolled-up scroll on his hand, his notes hidden in its inside face, and tapped it pensively against his other palm. If only he could find some sort of loop-hole in the laws of Asgard regarding prisoners of war and charges of the crown. He wished he were more gifted at law and studies than he was at swinging hammers. Odin King insisted all was practice, but Thor could not deny his talents lay elsewhere, and it irritated him. 

“Do stop me at anytime if I am mistaken,” Odin’s voice startled him as the King turned a corner, arching a white brow at him. “but do I not have you to go to my Council meetings when I am not available?”

“You have me for many things,” replied Thor. “but I do not believe ‘I wanted to have a nap in my wife’s bed through the afternoon’ counts as unavailable, father.”

“Your brother is not to be trusted,” said Odin petulantly. “I tell him to keep secrets and he tells you them at once.”

“Because he likes me more, as I am more dashing and nicer than you.”

“I have raised a brute and an animal. I will have to give you up in adoption.”

“I fear you have dawdled too long to take any such decision now,” laughed Thor. 

Odin smiled and fell in step with his son, clasping his hands behind his back as was his fashion. “And what is it that has entertained you all this day? I have not seen you at all. My, my—is that a scroll? Do not tell me now you have come to find appreciation for books. If this is Loki’s doing, I will have to up him from attendant to tutor.” 

Thor snorted. “That would only give him reasons to strike me with a cane, as if he did not have them aplenty.”

“Thor, no one canes students anymore. Keep up with the times.” 

The prince gave his father a mockingly scandalized look. “What has education fallen to? Odin, I watch you let Asgard fall into decay.”

“You are not funny. Now tell me the truth. You have neglected your duties in many things today, though none were pressing. What have you been up to?”

Thor sighed. He hesitated, and stopped walking. Odin walked another step and stopped, and turned slowly, frowning. Thor struggled for words. Could he tell Odin now? He did not yet have any clear idea of what solutions he could offer to the issue at hand. Of course Odin could come up with solutions himself, and they would undoubtedly be wise, if not kind. But Loki was _Thor’s_ charge, not Odin’s. 

“Father,” he started, quiet. “If I told you that I have something that has troubled me, and that I must find a way around it—but that I cannot tell you what it is… would you trust me to solve it before I brought it to you? Would you forgive the delay?”

Odin studied his son, all traces of amusement gone. 

“Has this matter troubled you so that you, in turn, cannot trust to bring it to me, and believe I will do my best to help you solve it?”

Thor felt anxiety bloom hot in his chest, but he stood his ground. 

“I am not a child, that you need to fix things for me, father.”

Odin smiled slightly. “You will always be my son, and I will always look for ways to fix things for you. But, to the matter at hand—yes, Thor. I trust you to deal with it in your own way—and I trust you, also, to know when you cannot solve it, and bring it then immediately to me.”

“I know my limitations,” groaned Thor, rubbing his eyes with his free hand. 

“And stop making your mother keep your secrets,” added the King, slapping his son on the side of his arm. “It makes her miserable, and she’s a poor liar besides.”

Thor winced. That was an understatement. 

“Do not ask her to tell you, I beg you.” 

“Have it your way, then,” Odin waved a hand to dismiss the matter. “I will not ask. But in exchange tomorrow you will tend to the Council, and _I_ will nap.”

“You are growing old, Odin, and it is showing!” Thor yelled after his father, as the King moved away down the corridor. 

“Keep on, my son,” called back Odin, without even turning his head. “One of these days you will wake hairless.”

“He would not dare,” laughed Sif, appearing at Thor’s shoulder in that strange way she had of moving quietly, on cat’s feet, through the castle. 

Thor glanced at her, grinning. “Do you not remember, when I was but ten, and I told him I disliked his hair for being so silver? He convinced one of the servants to use a hair soap he altered himself—“

“And you had white hair for weeks,” if laughed loudly. “Aye, I remember! So he would dare. Best beware. And—have you learned anything of use?”

“Nay,” Thor rubbed his face. “I have not. I…” he hesitated. “Sif, I do not know what to do.” 

She smiled sadly, patting his arm. “Let us at least have a walk outside. Scooped up all day inside that library like a mouse, it can’t possibly be good for you.” 

Thor conceded, and they walked the garden for a while, wrapped in heavy cloaks against the biting winter cold. There they met Fandral and Hogun, and Volstagg eventually, and they had a quiet dinner out in the snow. 

“I will ask him tomorrow,” Hogun said, later, as they stared up at the winter Asgard stars, smoking his long foreign pipe with fingers that were deceptively gentle. For all his deadliness, Hogun knew delicacy. 

Thor, on his back on top of his cloak, stared up at the moon. His breath trailed from his lips like plumes of smoke, dissipating, vague, above his face. 

“I am rudderless,” he murmured. “I am like a boat with no chart or star to guide its prow.”

Hogun paused, inhaled smoke, retaining it to coat his lungs with its heavy, rich, spicy taste, exhaled in two long columns from his nose, like a dragon with slitted eyes and hair as dark as ink. Of all of them the most quiet, the wisest, was Hogun. Hogun whose home had burnt to ashes, whose family’s blood had wetted the razed earth of his forefathers, Hogun the Grim, Hogun the Silent. 

“The waves you crash into will only make you stronger.”

“What of all the poor souls I leave in my wake as I learn?” Thor swallowed thickly. “Asgard has made so many mistakes already.”

Hogun turned his face upwards to the skies, and turned, sure and practiced, to the west. Across the rolling sea and the crashing waves, beyond the green hills of Vanaheim, beyond even the cold frozen wastes of Jotunheim, what had once been his homeland was nothing but nameless, dead earth. Hogun’s burden, the heaviest of all; he the last of his kind, and so infant at the time of his loss that he scarcely remembered his own tongue. 

“Does the sun rise in the mornings?” 

Thor looked at him. “It does.”

“Then you have your star, as sure as you have your heart. He and it are one. Follow you heart; put your prow to the sun. It will lead you true.”

Thor sat up slowly, gathering the cape around his shoulders, and tipping forward, let his forehead fall forward against the hard, slopping muscle of Hogun’s shoulder. He smelt of smoke and the metal of his knives. Thor breathed in, deep, held his breath, exhaled slowly. 

“Hogun,” he sighed, hiding his face in the heavy thick folds of Hogun’s cape, safe in the knowledge that Hogun, as Fandral and Volstagg and Sif, would give to the last drop of his blood to spare a drop of Thor’s. A heavier sacrifice for all Thor could not promise the same. His life didn’t belong to him, as the other’s belonged to themselves. Thor belonged to Asgard. 

“We are brothers,” he murmured. 

Hogun turned his face back to Thor, and shifting, leaned down to press a soft, chaste kiss to his temple. 

“I am your brother,” he said, not unkindly. “But you are my Prince. You cannot promise me things a brother would give me readily.”

Thor let himself fall back to the snow, chest tight. 

“Speak with Loki tomorrow,” he said at length. 

“It would please Hogun to train him, to be sure,” Fandral said, slipping into the conversation now it was less private. “But with his precarious situation—are you certain it is the wisest thing?”

Thor thought: you heart will lead you true. 

“Aye,” he said finally. “Prince, priest, bastard or servant, he is his own master, and has a right to protect his own life, as sure as any man.” 

Sif pulled her cape closer around herself, thoughtful, but she said nothing, and Volstagg and Fandral were only too eager to change the subject into merrier interests. 

The next morning, Thor rose early. He tended to the Council meeting first thing, listening to advice and making notes in his mind to bring these matters to father at the noon meal. One that was done and the matters that could be treated then and there had been dealt with satisfactorily to all parties, Thor resolved to return to the library and continue on his studies. 

He found Loki sitting in the chair had had occupied the previous day, legs crossed and fingers laced on his lap. In front of him all the books Thor had already read were piled neatly one on top of the other. Thor felt his stomach drop to his feet, chest turn cold as ice. 

Loki’s eyes did not lift when he stepped cautiously closer and sat, carefully across from him. It took het a while before the Jotun raised them, calm like the ocean, revealing nothing. 

“You know, then.”

Thor laced his own fingers on top of the table, gathering the scattering tendrils of his thoughts and praying for calm. 

“I would have been a fool to dismiss your words, hateful as they sounded.” 

“Yes,” Loki agreed, quiet. “You are not as much a fool as I would like.”

Thor snorted.

“Will I be executed?”

Loki sounded almost bored with the question, but there was something underneath his calm voice, something roiling under the surface of his jade-green eyes, that spoke of a different story. Fear. Loki was scared. As well he should be—he was a smart man, smart enough to understand the floor had fallen away from his feet. 

“No,” said Thor, honestly and firmly. “Asgard does not execute men in punishment for sins not of their own making.” 

Loki took a deep, long breath, filling his lungs. It looked in Thor’s eyes like an attempt to dissipate bands of tensions that had wrapped around his ribs, cables and cords of anxiety and fear. 

“I told you I would protect you,” he said softly. “Do you believe me?”

Loki’s eyes darted over the books, over Thor’s wide, strong hands, roamed across his broad shoulders and arms and down away to the side, to the tall windows. He closed them, breathed in, and finally looked at Thor directly, expressionless. 

“I do.”

Despite himself, Thor could tell. He swallowed. 

“I am sorry.”

Loki’s brows twitched slightly closer. “You have so much to apologize for, I can hardly pick which one I should forgive you for. That alone is not enough to earn my friendship. You have many amends to make.” 

Thor inclined his head, mouth twisting bitterly. “I apologize for many of those, as well. Not all of them, for many of the things you perceive as slights were my duty. I will not apologize to you for doing what I must, Loki. But—“ he steeled himself. “No. I apologize for what I’m going to do to you now.”

Loki stiffened visibly. “What?” he rasped. 

Thor met his gaze square on. “I need to know, Loki.”

The priest’s teeth clicked together, cheeks growing pale. 

“Loki,” Thor sat up straighter, stifling the urge to reach for the boy’s hands. Loki didn’t appreciate being touched; it would offer him no comfort. “Please. I know—“

“You know nothing!” snapped Loki, surging up to his feet, taken suddenly by restless, overheating fury of such magnitude his eyes seemed to throw sparks. Suddenly, he looked as glorious as he ever did, and Thor was speechless in the face of it, of Loki filled with life and not a silent, expressionless doll. Oh, would that he could get Loki to be liked this at every turn instead of a creature chained within its own chest—

“How dare you claim to know?” demanded Loki, slamming his palms against the table angrily as he leaned forward, furious. “You, whose father loves you madly, whose mother walks around this earth claiming you are the sun in her life, you who has a brother whose name you are allowed to speak! You _know nothing_ , Thor Odinson!”

“Then _tell_ me,” Thor begged, spreading his hands, vulnerable and open upon the table, for Loki to flay if he chose to—and he would, Thor knew. “Tell me, Loki! Tell me what I do not know, that I may hope to understand!”

“You will never understand what I have lived through,” snarled Loki, straightening. “You might as well teach the mighty soaring eagle to swim the depths of frozen oceans. You, golden son of Asgard, you great revered warrior—“

“I must know!” Thor roared, getting up and towering over Loki even from across the table, heart consumed with a racing beat. “I must know who you are so that I can keep you safe! Are you so blind to this that you will not see that I can protect you, if only I knew the truth—If you but let me understand! I know that you hate me,” he said crisply, when Loki opened his mouth to retort, no doubt a scathing reply already on his tongue. That brought Loki up short. “And it is your right. Hate me, despise me, loathe me, wish upon me whatever Ill your mind can concoct which I’m sure are many! Do this, yes—but do not for the act of hating me take away your own safety, which I can provide you with, if only I could—see, what it is in front of my eyes!” 

He stopped himself, forced himself to be as still as ancient trees in the wood. He thought of the tranquil slow trickle of a stream, and the soft fresh winds of summer. _Calm_ , he thought, _be calm_. He held himself still until he knew for certain he had his temper under control, and only then did he turn back to Loki. The Jotun was looking at him, eyes sharp with dangerous intelligence, face guarded. 

“I have taken much from you,” Thor said roughly. “I would not take the liberty to feel as you will, and if you hate me, then so be it—I understand. But as much as you despise me, you must see that keeping this from me is to your own detriment, and not mine. Help yourself, Loki, at least this once.” 

Loki stared at him for a long time, eyes moving swiftly across his face, lips pursed. Finally he snorted delicately. 

“Understanding you is beyond me, Odinson,” he said. “For all your blustering foolishness you are genuine, I can tell.”

He slumped forward and let his hands rest on the table momentarily, head hanging. Thor stared at the crown of his head, almost afraid to breathe, for fear it would break the truce hanging now between them. Finally Loki shook his head, slightly, briefly, and turned to the window. 

“You promised me I was not chained to this castle,” he said. “Will you walk with me to the city?”

“Of course,” Thor said immediately, all too willing to leave the library. 

Loki nodded slowly, eyes distant. “Then I will tell you. Whatever it is you believe you need to know.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS for child maltreatment and cruelty, mentions of past sexual abuse to secondary background character. 
> 
> Guys I am so sorry it has been this long. I never wanted this story to drag like this, but things have been happening in RL, and I've decided to move back to my hometown after all, so a lot of changes. I wanted to update already to make it clear this story is _not_ abandoned. I know exactly where I'm going and and going to FINISH this story, I swear. I just, I'm a bit of a mess right now. /sigh
> 
> Anyway, sorry. I'll try to update more regularly! Thank you so much for being patient and sticking around.

“Nineteen.”

Startled, Thor looked up. Loki was lying, stretched out and lazy on the grass beneath the shade of a large willow tree. One hand rested lightly on his stomach; the other shielded his eyes form the sunlight. 

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m nineteen years old,” Loki explained. “You never asked.”

“Oh,” Thor blinked. “No, I suppose I did not. It was not… relevant. I’m twenty-three.” 

“And not yet a King?” Loki glanced at him. “Do you never feel the urge to rule, to urgency to be in the throne?”

“I don’t relish the prospect, actually,” muttered Thor. 

Loki sat up, tilting his head and frowning. “You do not?”

“The throne is… a lot of responsibilities.” 

“A lot of power.”

“Power I can’t effectively wield,” replied Thor. “There are limits—“

Loki laughed, quiet and dark. “Limits, to a man whose family has no qualms on taking slaves?”

Thor pinned Loki with a cold look. “You want me to believe taking slaves was not precisely the reason your father launched a brutal and bloody invasion on Svartalfheim in their winter, when you knew they would be at their weakest? Not the reason three years ago you sent excursions to Vanaheim that set fire to entire crops and razed small villages, leaving behind no survivors?”

Loki looked pale, but eyes were lit with rage. “You’ve no proof,” he said, voice tight. 

“I’m not an idiot, regardless of your personal opinion, nor is my father.” 

“Is that why you invaded us?” Loki demanded, getting to his feet slowly. “Or was it really just because you wanted a boy to warm your bed?”

Thor’s mind whited-out with anger for a moment, and he thought he might leap to his feet and strike the Jotun, hard across the face. He stared across the river, tense as a bowstring, and moved not a muscle. 

Across the silver-blue of the river, on the other bank, a tall willow tree was beginning to bloom, white and lovely. In the flush of spring by the noon of this month, it’s be covered entirely in white, like a bridal gown, and trail petals of satin on the grass and on the water like fallen stars. Thor found a blood and watched it sway slowly in the breeze, small and beautiful, until the first wash of violent anger had gone from him and he could breathe through a throat not tight with wrath. 

Clever Loki. He knew Thor’s greatest weakness was his temper. 

Thor took a deep breath, and let his anger bleed away with his exhale, like Hogun had taught him. Hogun was a master of control, and things Odin’s chosen mentors could not get through Thor’s head in weeks, Hogun had managed to enforce in a matter of hours. 

“I don’t want to force you to have sex with me,” Thor said firmly, when he could keep his voice steady. He brought his face around to look at Loki directly, rising to his feet, firm and tall and sincere. Loki opened his mouth, sneering, so Thor talked right over him. “Yes, I find you attractive, I admit it, and I’m not ashamed of it, but no. I have no interest in an unwilling partner, or even on someone who’d just put up with it. Are we done with this subject or do you have another witty retort to make about it in hopes of embarrassing me?” 

Loki stared at him. Then, unexpectedly, he laughed, not his usual bitter little chuckle, but a true and honest laugh. He spread his arms out, stepping back, shaking his head. 

“The golden home of the gods,” he said, smiling, eyes alight with mischief. “Where the sky and the land are stitched together with threads of gold and might.” 

“And the ash of the defeated and the weak,” added Thor, who also knew this poem, though song and prose didn’t come to him as easily as did swordfight. “And as the world turns end over end and plunges into the dark, as does darkness like a blade slice gold from flesh.” 

Loki shook his head, amused. “And your father approves of your liking of men?” 

“My father could not care less,” Thor shrugged, “So long as I do as I ought, take a wife and have an heir.”

“The Lady Sif?”

“I might as well marry my sister,” Thor grimaced. 

“Ah, but some kings do,” Loki pointed out, impish. It seemed being out of the castle sat well with him, as he was playful and cheeky, here in the riverbank. 

“And they have idiot children who with a taste for malice,” Thor arched a brow. 

“I should think knowing your uncle is your father is enough to turn everyone inside out and into madness.” 

“Indeed. Say, Loki—are you well and truly finished dodging, or would you like to discuss horses, next?”

Loki’s mouth twisted. “There is no diverting you.” 

Thor tilted his head slightly and sat back down, bracing his elbows on his knees and watching as Loki walked idly to the edge of the river and crouched down to wet his fingertips, thoughtful and quiet. 

“If you jump again, I will put a chain on you,” Thor said, and meant it. 

Loki’s head made a small gesture as though he had rolled his eyes so harshly his head had been forced to follow the motion. 

“You do have a penchant for that,” he muttered. “I will not jump. I might as well wait for you to kill me yourself, and spent eternity knowing you’ll blame yourself to the day you die.” 

“Perhaps I’ll find myself justified,” growled Thor. 

“No,” Loki looked at him mockingly over his shoulder. “Not at all. I’ll always be the poor little boy you murdered. It should be glorious to watch you crawl over yourself with anguish. You’ll have nightmares, I know.” 

Thor sighed. “Violence doesn’t end violence, Loki. It perpetuates it. You don’t slash across a wound to close it.” 

Loki’s eyes fell to where his hands had laced between his thighs, mouth a thin line. Here, crouched as he was by the river in the golden sunlight, he looked, again, beautiful. And so young. Nineteen years old, thought Thor. Merely a boy, emerging slowly into manhood. 

Loki blinked rapidly a few times, and finally gathered himself and straightened his spine, face expressionless. 

“Nineteen years ago,” he started quietly. “As surely you know, Jotunheim invaded Alfheim. The goal of the invasion was to subdue the nation and turn it into a tributary province for Jotunheim, so that better goods could reach the Capital in better shape and through faster roads.”

“The neighboring nation of Midgard stopped the invasion,” Thor nodded. “A surprise at the time, since Midgard was weak and feeble.”

Loki’s brows rose and fell quickly in an expressive gesture of understanding. “They had a good head on their shoulders, and the Jotuns knew very little discipline then. The first wave, however, was very effective, and my Laufey managed to bring to its knees a large village.”

“Vinafayra,” Thor frowned. “He only held it for three days, if I remember correctly.” 

“More than enough time, you understand, for the bloodthirsty Jotun soldiers to raze it entirely,” Loki spread his hands, smiling a nasty, cruel little smile. “If there is one thing Jotuns can do well, it is slitting throats and raping women.” 

Loki paused momentarily, eyes falling to Thor’s broad, strong hands where they hung relaxed between his knees. Thor wondered if Loki was calculating all the damage he could do to helpless women, with these hands of wide palms and scarred knuckles, fingers long and square and darkly tanned. 

“Laufey took Vinafayra, and thought himself well on his way to controlling Alfheim. This was cause for celebration, naturally. Laufey was already married at that time to a fine Jotun noblewoman of renowned beauty, but let it never be said that Laufey is not a caricature of himself.”

There was a mocking sort of disdain in Loki’s tone, but the way his teeth grinded together if he closed his mouth told Thor things Loki was not saying; a deep loathing for his father, that spoke of more than neglect and coldness. 

“He found for himself the most beautiful Alfheimr girl he could—and Alfheim, as you know is no shortage of beauties—and raped her.” 

Thor felt his stomach twist. He thought he knew where this was going. Loki’s face was completely devoid of expression, like a smooth slab of ice. 

“Three days later, when Midgard fell upon Vinafayra like demons in the night, Laufey , in what I can only assume was a whim and the fact no one was stopping him, took the girl with him back to Jotunheim, and there put her in a locked room for lifelong slavery.”

“The queen allowed this?” Thor asked tightly. 

Loki gave him a cold, vacant look. “Sexual slavery is no news in Jotunheim. She could not have cared less if he slit her throat and fucked her corpse, so long as he continued to visit her bed whenever she desired him, which she did.”

Thor took a deep breath and exhaled, lacing his fingers to stop his hands from shaking. 

“The queen was—“

“What was her name?” 

Loki blinked at him. “Whose?”

“The girl’s. The prisoner.” 

Loki stared at him for a long time, eyes flat and dead. “Her name was ‘slave’, ‘nothing’ and ‘worthless’.” 

Thor swallowed, shifted to cross his legs and rub a hand across his forehead. 

“So you see, the slave could have lived a miserable and unremarkable life in the damp little cave forever, but sadly she eventually got with child. A slave’s child would of course immediately be out to the blade upon their birth, or if managed before even that, but Laufey was unlucky, and the girl was pregnant before his wife. Which made the boy the first child of the king, and therefore the heir.”

Thor felt sick, but he had to ask. 

“A slave’s boy, even?” 

“The king’s blood is the king’s blood,” said Loki. “No one cares who the mother is. The mother has no rights to the child in any case. If the slave had birthed a girl, it would have been a valuable asset, a princess to marry off to a favored general or a vaguely liked foreign royal. Unfortunately the child was a boy, and the firstborn heir of Laufey—heir to the throne and the kingdom.”

“So you _are_ the heir,” Thor sighed. 

“Impatient boy,” chuckled Loki, and it was a horrible sound, as horrible as the cruel glint in his green eyes. “Story time is not yet over. Here comes the good part.” 

Loki shifted, closer like a cat, and before Thor knew what he was doing the slender man was gripping his knees, sinking his fingernails into the leather of his breeches. Thor leaned back, bracing his hands against the grass, ill-at-ease with the sudden and unwarranted proximity.

“You see, the queen is an ambitious woman,” he said softly. “And she would not lose her place to a filthy slave whore. So once the boy was born, she had the mother killed, and planned for the boy to die—but alas, Laufey did like the child, and would not part with it. Unable to kill it, then—“

“Him.”

Loki frowned slightly, “What?”

“Unable to kill _him_. The child. You.”

“Yes,” Loki said impatiently, as if the matter held no weight at all. “She couldn’t kill me. She eventually got pregnant herself, of course, but the other child was already heir, and there was nought to do about _that_. Except,” and here Loki lifted a long index finger from Thor’s left knee and tilted his head, and Thor knew, suddenly, knew as well as he knew the sky was blue, that Loki was mad. 

“Unless the boy proved to be unworthy of the throne,” Loki said silkily. “But, ah. There was the problem—for the only way a healthy and whole boy could be declared unworthy was if it was proved he was unable to produce an heir, and of course a boy too young yet to toddle can’t be proved to be able to do such a thing, unless you see from the start he has no cock, and in that respect allow me to say I am well enough equipped.”

Loki shifted, bracing his elbows on Thor’s knees and lacing his fingers, smiling. 

“There, then, was the answer the queen was looking for. Make the boy unfertile. And there are, as you’ll know, a lot of way to do that, though of course cutting off the testicles seemed rather crass, and very obvious besides. A woman’s weapon is always subtlety, though, and there is very few more cunning than the queen of Jotunheim. Laufey was only too eager to let the queen care for the boy as if she were her own, and quickly entrusted him to her—“

“Stop speaking as if this were not your story,” Thor cut through, feeling like his blood had turned to ice. 

Loki surged forward suddenly, like a spark and fire, and gripped Thor’s hair so tightly tears came to Thor’s eyes. Their faces were inches apart, and Loki was sneering distastefully, and Thor told himself _you will not hurt him_. 

“This is my story and I will tell it as I very well please,” growled Loki. He tightened his grip in Thor’s hair and shook him, almost savagely, as if he hoped Thor’s head would snap clean off at the neck. And then, as brusquely as he had moved before, he released him and stood, and again he was smiling genially, eyes fever-bright. 

“There are ways,” he continued. “Too make women barren. Herbs, and teas, and potions to stop the woman’s body of growing fertile. The queen knew how to make them, and as soon as the boy was entrusted to her, she began giving them to him.”

Here he paused, frowning slightly. “They were very bitter.”

Contemplative, pensive almost, he walked back to the river and crouched down, watched the water trickle between his spread fingers. 

“By the age of fourteen, traditionally the age a boy will leave a girl pregnant in Jotunheim, it was clear I was wholly physically unfit to father any offspring. The queen wanted me put to the blade immediately, but Laufey knew I was—valuable, in other ways. And so I was sent to the temple.”

He turned again, and spread his hands, glorious and beautiful and completely, heartbreakingly mad. “And the rest, as they say, is history.” 

Thor’s mind was blank, and his stomach felt like it had been filled with cold, cold lead, and the only thing he managed to say was, “That’s why you hardly eat. It ruined your stomach.” 

It was the dumbest, most stupid thing to say. 

Loki stared at him for a long moment, pale against his dark hair—and then, brusquely, he was on Thor, as if he thought he might manage to grasp his neck and wring it. Thor cursed and turned them, wrestled Loki to the grass and pinned him there on his stomach, gripping his wrists and bracing his weight against him. 

“Enough! Stop this madness! _Loki!_ ” 

“May you never enter Valhalla, you dull, brainless oaf!”

“You’re half as heavy as I am, you little idiot!” Thor grunted. “have you learned nothing from Hogun’s lessons?”

Loki stilled. 

“Hogun?” he asked, hesitating. 

“Yes, Hogun,” Thor said, exasperated. “You know him, small eyes, dark hair, Hogun the Grim, good with a spear and terrible song voice—“

“I know Hogun,” snapped Loki. “But you—you knew? He’s teaching me?”

Thor stared down at the side of Loki’s face, frowning. “That he’s teaching you one-on-one combat? Yes. Of course I knew. I’m not, as you think, a brainless maggot—“

“And you let him?” 

“Well, yes,” Thor answered, feeling like this was very much self-explanatory. “Of course I did. There would be little point to whip and knife training if you don’t know how to protect yourself without them, and Hogun is the best. What gave you the idea I didn’t know?” 

Loki frowned. “Why?” 

“Why what?”

“Why did you _let_ him?”

Thor took a moment to wonder where this conversation was coming from, and where it was going, and then settled for the thought that he was probably not going to figure it out, because Loki’s mind was like a labyrinth. 

“He offered and I thought you would be interested. Did I make a mistake?”

“ _Did_ you?” sneered Loki. 

Thor sighed, shoved him into the grass—childish but well deserved—and got up. 

“Do you want me to ask Hogun to stop teaching you?”

Loki sat up slowly, rubbing his wrists where bruises were already forming. Thor felt immediately guilty, and struggled not to let it show, because he knew by now that Loki would see it as a crack through which he could slide a blade. Clever Loki. 

“No,” the Jotun murmured. “I want to learn.” 

“Alright then,” sighed Thor, and felt exhausted. 

Silence stretched between them, cold and brittle. Gods only knew what was going through Loki’s head. Thor certainly had no idea. 

“Will I be made a slave?” asked Loki after a while, voice quiet and flat. 

Thor considered the truth and then the lies, and finally said, “I don’t know.” 

“You don’t know?” Loki scorned. “What a glorious king you will be, never having the answer to anything!”

“Would you prefer I lie to you?” Thor gritted his teeth. “I don’t know, Loki. I’ve never been in this situation before. It is unprecedented. You are, surely you know, rather unique.” 

The kept Loki silent for a little while. Finally the Jotun stood, and dusted off his breeches and shirt. 

“Will you plead for me with your father?”

Thor looked up to the sky, and squinted at an eagle soaring high above them, wings spread so the feathers looked like wide reaching fingers. 

“I told you once I would keep you safe, Loki. Even against my father.” 

When he turned back to the Jotun, Loki was giving him a wry, mocking smile. 

“The poor end of that deal, my prince.” 

Thor snorted. 

“It’s no hardship,” he sighed. “Although, I must say, if one day I wake up bald, you better knit me a hat.” 

Loki didn’t seem to understand, but he arched a brow and tilted his head. “I will make you the finest of gold-thread braided wigs.” 

Thor smiled. “That should be a sight.”

There was another long moment of silence, and Loki swallowed, frowning, and then waved a hand rather vaguely. “You really do mean to keep me safe, insofar as you may, then.” 

It sounded like he was only now even beginning to believe it, and Thor snorted.

“I’m not a good liar, Loki. If I’m speaking untruths, you’ll know it.” 

“I have noticed that,” Loki retorted. 

Thor exhaled, and rubbed his brow tiredly. “I need to speak to father and the Council.”

Loki’s eyes flicked away and then returned to Thor’s, determined. “I am valuable, as a scholar. You could use that as a bargaining chip for them not to make me a slave.” 

Thor saw the wisdom of that, and nodded. “I will. Thank you.”

Loki scoffed. “I’m only protecting myself.” 

Thor shrugged. “A common goal at last. That is poison ivy, by the way.”

Loki quickly darted away from the plant he had been idly fingering. He studied his fingers intensely, as if he was waiting for them to turn black and fall off. Thor grinned. 

“You’ll lose that whole arm, I expect. I shall have to commission one made of wood to replace it. I will make sure its nails are pointy and sharp, never worry.”

“Nonsense,” scowled Loki petulantly. 

The rest of the way back to the castle, he kept rubbing his fingertips as if he expected them to show signs early signs that his arm might be falling, and he glared when Thor snickered.


	8. The Honor of the House of Bor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Loki stared at him, long hands spreading helplessly. “But you love your father. He is everything to you. Why risk his wrath to shield me? Why have you done that?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Getting back into the swing of things, one novel and _Thor The Dark World_ later. 
> 
> Updates may come slowly, as it's summer and harvest season besides, but I'll try to update as regularly as I can. 
> 
> Thank you all so much for having faith and sticking with me, and for all the kind words and encouragement. I know I've done little to deserve it, and can only apologize for the unforgivable length of the hiatus.
> 
> A lot of political shenanigans going on here. Sad but necessary. But something of a glimmer of hope at the end, at least!

The windows were open in the Council Room, and ice and snow drifted slowly in to perch and melt on the stones beneath the window. Despite the open window, the fire raged on the three hearths around the room and the air was warm. Beneath his fine formal clothes, Thor could feel sweat gather and trickle down the groove of his spine.

His heart beat too quickly in his chest. He inhaled deeply and helf the breath in his lungs for a long moment, exhaling it later to watch it fog on the cold air from the window, but it didn’t ease his anxiety as it usually did.

Behind him, the last chair finally scraped to a halt and silence fell.

“Let us commence,” said Odin.

Thor turned around and regarded the Council. Twelve men and women of wisdom seated around a round table engraved with the figure of a raven, the symbol of the House of Bor, the ruling bloodline of Asgard going back generations. By the farthest hearth, sitting below a closed window to a small tea table, Frigga smiled slightly at him, encouraging.

“Councilmen, Odin King,” he started, swallowing. “I thank you for coming. I’ve called you here to discuss a matter of urgency concerning a prisoner of the state, my charge, Loki of Jotunheim.”

Inhaling deeply again, he approached the table and stood at the empty space across from Odin where a chair would be added, should Thor of Frigga ever decide to join in the meetings.

“I would ask that you listen to me before you speak up, for there is much I must confess, and little of it simple.”

The Council exchanged puzzled looks, but they all nodded, and Odin gestured for him to carry on.

“The first thing you must know is that any and all fault lies with me. When I first found and captured Loki, he told me clearly that he was a disgraced son of Laufey and had been removed from the line to the throne. If you ask Lady Sif and Lord Fandral you will find them in agreement with me. At the time, with Laufey’s apparent heir dead in the battlefield, I considered Loki to be lying to save himself, and took him prisoner despite his assurances that it would be an exercise in futility. When a ceasefire was negotiated and the Jotun king was informed of Loki’s capture, Laufey showed willingness to give peace in exchange for his son’s life. I believe you will agree with this, my King?”

Frowning, Odin slowly nodded.

“The situation then seemed to me straightforward. Loki had lied, but his father’s affection for him had revealed his deception, and so despite his continued protestations, I brought him to Asgard and took him as my charge. At this moment I must also reveal that when I revealed to Loki that his father had shown interest in his life, the boy was startled and genuinely surprised. I assumed at the time that knowing his father to be a proud man, Loki was surprised he would bend the knee to Odin, even for his son’s life. In fact, I believe the King can attest to me bringing my concern over Loki’s captivity value to the war council table the morning after his capture.”

Odin nodded again. Thor was beginning to feel calmer, as though he was stepping onto firmer ground. All the things he had said thus far were truths, and showed very clearly where the guilt lay. He breathed in deeply.

“However, I would have been a fool not to further investigate is claims. My research revealed many reasons for him to have been removed from the throne, and together with the Queen’s own suspicions,” he paused to allow Frigga to stand and nod her agreement. “I have come to the conclusion that my choice to take Loki as a captive was the wrong one.”

There was a long moment of stunned silence in the chamber.

“My Prince,” started Bjalki, face thunderous. “Your explanation leaves much to be desired.”

Thor opened his mouth, intending at least to preserve some of Loki’s privacy, but Frigga gestured for him to stop.

“Loki is a bastard son,” she said with aplomb. “And the Queen’s cruelty has ensured he will never sire an heir. There is no chance for him to be in the line to the throne, which in turn makes him of little worth to Asgard as a bargaining chip. However,” she said loudly when the Council began to speak up. “Not all is lost.”

“The law of Asgard requires for an heir to the crown of a subdued enemy to learn the ways if our land,” said Eilif. “If Loki is not in this position, then he must be replaced.”

“He is not a broken bow to be discarded,” protested Frigga. “You are discussing a boy’s life. Rise to the occasion, my lords, or else keep your peace.”

“My Queen,” said Odin, eye flinty. Frigga stared him down across the table.

“The law of Asgard prohibits a servant to be punished for his master’s mistakes,” Thor reminded them. “I have studied this. The fault and punishment both lie with me. He gave me the truth and I did not listen.”

Haki waved a hand in dismissal. “That can hardly be called a mistake when the situation suggested he was deceiving you.”

“Whatever the case, he spoke the truth and I dismissed him,” stressed Thor. “Therefore I am to blame, and I ask that you do not punish him at all.”

“So you suggest we keep him as he is?” asked Odin. “A priest has no value to Asgard. Thor. By all rights he ought to be considered a prisoner of war.”

Thor flinched at the idea. A status as a prisoner of war would demand Loki be held in the dungeons with the others.

“But Loki has value,” he replied. “He is a scholar, well learned, highly educated, mannered—”

“We have such scholars in Asgard, and of our own bloodlines, my Prince,” said Bjalki not unkindly. “And if Loki is as clever as you suggest, perhaps it would b best to keep him away from further knowledge.”

“To deny someone knowledge is never the answer,” snapped Thor. “Nor is it to deny them what little gives them joy, and I have been with Loki, and I can tell you that all that gives him joy lies in that library.”

“We are not in the business of making him happy,” said Odin patiently, though his eye was soft with compassion. “He is a risk, Thor.”

“My King,” started Thor, and swallowed. “Have you not taught me always that a kindness will earn you more loyalty than cruelty? Is it not preferable to have a man love you well rather than fear you? Loki—he has not been treated well, ever, I suspect.”

“Thor,” said Odin. “A gentleness now will not ease away years of torment, nor the many slights we ourselves have inflicted on him. You are not naif enough to believe you can win us his heart, when we have imprisoned him and further wounded his pride.”

“If this is your belief,” said Frigga. “Why then do you uphold the tradition of capturing foreign princes?”

“I hope for friendship from them, not love,” pointed out the King. “Furthermore, royal princes are usually more tractable than Loki, as they have been brought up to carry themselves with an equanimity Loki lacks. And in any case, whether I believed in the chance to win over Loki’s good will or not, it is irrelevant given that he offers us no leverage with Laufey.”

“But my Lord,” spoke up Hranni. “Laufey did negotiate.”

“Indeed,” smiled Thor, grateful. “He negotiated for Loki’s life, did he not? And consider this; a Jotun law was shrugegd aside to allow Loki to live despite his apparent uselessness, so surely Laufey must love him.”

“He could love him,” agreed Odin, looking distinctly doubtful. “But that doesn’t make Loki valuable to the next King of Jotunheim. Or do you have cause to believe his sister also loves him? She withdrew from the city with a large portion of the host and left him to be killed.”

“We can ask for Loki to be made a counselor to the crown,” said Thor, heart racing. If the Council did not go for this, chances of Loki keeping his current place in Asgard would plummet. “If Laufey loves him as we believe, he will agree to this to keep him safe, and then when it is time for the new King to ascend, Loki can still speak up for Asgard, even if he is not the ruler himself.”

“There is no guarantee his sister will listen to him.”

“There is also no guarantee a King will make his best to keep a peace with Asgard even after he has been kept here for the time between the death of his father and his own crowning,” replied Frigga. “Pesky thing, free will.”

“My Queen disagrees with this old tradition,” sighed Odin. “As I am certain you all know perfectly well, for she has spoken up against it many times, in varying volumes.”

Frigga narrowed her eyes at him. Thor did not want to imagine what would transpire behind closed doors this night. He would be sure to entertain Baldr in his own chambers, just to be safe. They boy was always terribly upset when Odin and Frigga argued.

Thor swallowed again, bracing himself. He had hoped it would not come down to this, to the argument he was about to make, but he was more willing to face Odin’s displeasure than to betray his own sense of responsibility concerning Loki. He hoped Odin would see it as he did; if not, then Thor could only hope his father’s displeasure would last little.

“Loki is my charge,” he said heavily. “I am responsible for him. I am his guide and his shield. I gave him my word that I would see to his welfare, that he would be treated justly, and kindly. On my honor.”

Odin’s eyes gleamed. He’d caught the trap, then. Thor held his gaze for a long moment, unwilling to apologize.

Odin said, “Let us adjourn to tomorrow afternoon.”

Thor blinked in shock.

“My King?” asked a Councilman hesitantly, surprised.

“This is a matter of grave importance,” explained Odin calmly. “A boy’s life and future are on the table. Let us take time to think on it. We will reconvene tomorrow.”

Thor looked at him mother, unsettled, but Frigga also looked surprised. As the Council began to rise, Thor rounded the table, but just as he reached his father, the King stopped him with a gesture.

“Until tomorrow, Thor.”

Speechless by the curt rejection, Thor turned around and left the chamber.

Sif and Hogun were waiting outside, sitting at a windowsill. They approached immediately when he came outside, eager for news.

“Adjourned?” repeated Sif. Tentatively she added, “Unusual, but not… unheard of.”

Thor gave her a patient look. “You do not know.”

“I really don’t,” she confessed, allowing her face to fall into a concerned grimace.

“It is more than unusual,” said Thor, starting to move down the hall. “It has not been done in decades. I angered father, I know, and he is doing this to make me squirm.”

“Perhaps he genuinely needs the time to consider,” offered Sif.

“No,” muttered Thor. “He and I both know there is only one choice for him to make. The only one I left him.”

 

 X

Thor’s move did not improve throughout the rest of the day, although he did his best to attend to his daily duties. Sulking and feeling guilty were not viable excuses for him to skip them, after all. Eventually, having dispensed will all his obligations, he wandered to the training yard where Hogun was instructing Loki through a series of bodily counterattacks. For this purpose he had engaged Fandral’s help, and the Dashing was clearly having rather a great time of it.

“No,” he was saying, laughing as Thor joined Sif in the bench at the side of the yard. “You can not topple me with that hold. I’ll break your nose, you little fool. Pay attention.”

Slick, snake-quick, Fandral shoved himself bodily against Loki, knocking his forehead lightly against the boy’s nose, and then wrenched his wrist away as Loki fell on his back to the dirt. Without waiting one moment, Fandral reached down and dragged Loki up to his feet, smiling to soften the blow.

“He’s faster than you and more experienced,” said Hogun, circling them. “Don’t hesitate to take him down, or he’ll see your intentions.”

Loki nodded wordlessly and he and Fandral engaged in another series of holds and attacks, but Fandral was evidently superior, and although Thor could see his friend being purposefully gentle, Loki was soon bruised and haggard.

“This is a wasted day,” announced Hogun at last, drawing Loki away by the arm.

“I am not done,” rasped Loki.

“You are unused to rigorous physical training, and grow weary. You are no good today. Stretch and cool yourself.”

Hogun’s tone was not unkind, but Thor could see Loki bristle and the implication that he was weak. Still, Loki nodded and did not argue; Thor was yet to see him speak up to Hogun, or indeed any of his teachers. Failure evidently frustrated Loki, but he knew better than to take it out on anyone but himself. He stalked away and indeed started stretching, if his motions were yet angry and brusque. The Grim joined Thor in the bench, reaching back to undo his hair tie and do it again, tighter. Watching the quick move,ents of his deft fingers, Thor explained how the Council meeting had gone.

Hogun’s dark eyes pinned him to the seat, sharp as any blade. “It is not me you should be soothing with these news.”

Thor knew that. He had wanted to give Loki a chance to gather himself after the exertion of training, but Hogun was right; Loki was obviously unsettled, and to keep him in suspense until he next day was wicked. Rising, he went to where Loki was stretching his shoulders.

“It is better if you do it like this,” he offered absently, showing Loki how to stretch his shoulder by folding his arm behind his neck and touching his palm to his own shoulder-blades.

Loki’s brows quirked, but he hesitantly tried it, and evidently found some relief for his strained muscles. Thor smiled slightly.

“The Council will reconvene tomorrow for a decision,” he said at length.

Loki stopped stretching, watching Thor with cautious, velvet-soft eyes.

“If I have some insight into your mind,” he said slowly. “You will have suggested that to make me anything less than I currently am would impugn your own honor.”

Thor smiled without humor. “Indeed. More than an insight.”

The priest frowned, eyes flicking away to where Sif and Hogun had begun an intricate combat, fast as arrows in flight. Fandral was lounging lazily in the sun on the bench, indolent and satisfied. Loki’s eyes came back, uncertain, to Thor.

“You’ve put your father in a corner, Thor. He can no more damage his own son’s honor than stab himself in the back. Will he not resent that?”

Thor rubbed his eyes. “I suspect there is little he resents less.”

Loki stared at him, long hands spreading helplessly. “But you love your father. He is everything to you. Why risk his wrath to shield me? Why have you done that?”

Thor looked at him for a long moment, all at once infused with compassion born out of the idea that Loki should think a disagreement with make Odin hate Thor for any great length of time—Thor knew Odin would forgive him, sooner or later, and most likely even respect his shrewdness—and overcome with a dark, weighing sort of exhaustion and helplessness.

“If you have not yet understood that, Loki,” he started, and then felt too tired to argue. Shaking his head, he squeezed Loki’s shoulder and turned away.

“I do understand,” snapped Loki, hand darting out to catch Thor’s wrist, to the Prince’s shock. Loki had never touched him before. His skin was cool and his fingers very smooth, and very strong. “I understand your foolish attachment to your honor, and your absolute necessity to do what you feel is right, but surely—you must understand by now, surely, even someone as dull as you, that I can give you no access to the crown of Jotunheim, no matter how well you treat me or how poorly.”

“At some point, Loki, it stops being about what you can give us and more about what you must have, simply as a living, breathing man. I brought you here, and whether you loved your priesthood or not, you were at peace with it, and I took that from you because I believed myself shrouded in a right I believed your birthright gave me. That birthright was taken from you, and then I took from you the life you were allowed to have.”

He allowed that to linger in the space between them for a while. He watched Loki swallow, face oddly vulnerable, eyes bright. Gently, he disentangled himself from the scholar’s grip and faced him.

“By my standards, ruled by the laws of our situations as I knew them, I treated you well,” he said softly. “But my entire grasp of this was askew, and so in truth I have done very poorly by you. I see that now. I’m less worried now about what advantages you can give me once I am King and more worried instead about what I can do to rectify my wrongdoing. And if I must face father for it, then I shall. You said yourself, after all,” he added with a smile. “I can be no less than I am.”

“And I no more,” replied Loki, weary and confused. “Can you not set me free?”

Thor shook his head slightly. “That option is not on the table, Loki.”

Loki looked away, eyes flicking quickly over Hogun, now straddling Sif on the dirt; over Fandral napping on the bench, sprawled out and completely at ease. The racks of blunt training weapons against the walls.

“I like Hogun,” he said quietly, green eyes snapping back to Thor as though he expected to be mocked. “I have no desire to go back to Jotunheim. I have known a better life here in what little time I have had than in all of my life back there. I know some freedom, and some friendship, eve some respect. But I did not ask you to give me these things. It is on your shoulders if I know them now, and on your shoulders as well if they are taken from me.”

Thor nodded slowly. “I am aware.”

Loki seemed subdued by that answer, shoulder slumping.

“I would not have thanked you for gifts given like scraps from a table,” he said quietly. “But I can thank you at least for defying your father for me. Even if you had put some calculation into it, surely my friendship would not outweigh your father’s wrath. I can only assume you did it genuinely.”

“Father will understand.”

“If you say,” said Loki dubiously.

Thor breathed out. “We will know tomorrow. Will you take the evening meal with us tonight?”

Loki hesitated. “If you will agree to dine in the gardens.”

Thor blinked, surprised. “Of course,” he agreed. “I’m certain the others will be amenable.”

The priest exhaled carefully. “Might you find more apples?”

Speechless, Thor nodded.

“Very well,” Loki said. “Until dinnertime, Thor.”

Thor watched Loki walk away until he had left the courtyard, and then turned around to stare at Sif as she came close, brows arched.

“An amiable conversation with no insults traded,” wondered Sif. “You must have done something well at long last. What’s with your wrist?”

Startled, Thor glanced down. He had idly been rubbing at his wrist where Loki had grasped him, as though he could still feel the coolness of his long fingers. Loki had, of course, not squeezed harshly enough to bruise or mark him.

Thor could feel it as though it had branded into his skin nonetheless.

“I really am a hopeless fool,” he lamented, running a hand through his hair.

Sif patted his arm compassionately and said, “Let Hogun beat you up. I’m sure that will clear your mind.”

Thor sighed in defeat, but he complied. Hogun beat him bloody, and then had the audacity to look put out when Thor didn’t get up the last time he was knocked to the ground, bottom lip split, shaking with silent laughter. Hogun was straddling him, both Thor’s wrists captive and held crossed across his chest, and was complaining about how worthless everyone was that day when Baldr came barreling in and knocked him on his side, sending up a cloud of loose dirt.

“I am defeated and yield,” said Hogun, mock-struggling against Baldr’s weak but not incorrect grasp on his right arm.

Thor felt a wave of love for his old friend, the best warrior in Asgard, that allowed himself to be bested by Thor’s little brother without even hesitating only to amuse and encourage the boy.

“Free for all!” cried out Sif, descending upon Baldr with ruthlessness and swiftly finding all the spots the boy was ticklish on. Badlr’s laugh was like a balm to Thor, soothing him like cool water on a burn. Like a breeze clearing grey clouds, Thor began to feel a glimmer of hope that things would, in the end, work out. He had to trust in his father. Odin would see the right of it.

“Now now,” laughed Fandral, coming over to see what Sif was doing. “Let us all behave like civilized animals.”

Thor tackled him to the ground.

“Foul!” gasped Fandral, kneeing him in the side.

It count only escalate from there, and did.  


End file.
